Why “sorry” is the hardest word

During the weeks since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that “sex” in the Equality Act refers to biology, much of Britain’s institutional elite has scrambled to deny its implications.

Shortly after the ruling Lloyds Banking Group’s Chief Corporate Affairs Director, Andrew Walton, rushed to the staff intranet to reassure members of the company’s Rainbow Network: “Please know that we cherish and celebrate you and we remain committed to inclusivity.” Similar sentiments echoed in other sectors, with professional bodies such as the junior doctors’ branch of the British Medical Association, and even high-street retailers such as Lush, promising to search for ways around the newly clarified law. 

But such visible attempts to placate outraged activists are not the whole story. Senior-leadership teams are waking up to the fact that the buck stops with them, and that unless they rewrite policies to comply with the law as clarified by the Supreme Court, they risk court cases or regulatory action. 

One of the most telling reversals has been by the Football Association (FA). From 1st June 2025, trans-identifying men will no longer be eligible to compete in the women’s game. This marks a sharp departure from the FA’s previous approach, which was amended last year to allow male players to compete in the women’s game “as long as they kept their testosterone levels below 5nmol/L for at least 12 months”. After taking legal advice, the FA has now followed in the boots of the Scottish Football association and excluded all men. 

This climbdown followed a string of controversies. Last year, 17-year-old Cerys Vaughan was suspended for six matches after asking a trans-identifying male opponent, “Are you a man?” during a grassroots match. The FA ruled that this was misconduct, triggering protests outside Wembley Stadium where demonstrators accused the body of prioritising ideology over fairness and safeguarding. It has since been revealed that the FA was one of many organisations to have paid for training from transactivist lobby group Gendered Intelligence on “trans inclusion”. 

Last week Vaughan, revealing her name for the first time, said she wants an apology from the FA for the unjust way she was treated. One doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. “We can confirm that this disciplinary case has now been closed, as the complainant has chosen to withdraw from the process due to personal reasons,” the FA said in a statement. “All relevant parties have been informed of this outcome and no further action will be taken.”

It should not have taken the Supreme Court judgment to force the FA to act. Its previous policy had nothing to do with gender-recognition certificates – it was, in effect, gender self-ID, which was never the law. But as the dust settles, it’s becoming clear that the institutions now belatedly rewriting their policies are denying any responsibility for getting things wrong in the first place. 

None have apologised to those they punished or persecuted during the past 15 years, during which gender self-ID became the norm. Academics disciplined for defending women’s rights; clinicians hounded out for raising safeguarding alarms; volunteers expelled from charities for objecting to male bodies in female spaces: it’s as if none of it ever happened.

These scandals were caused in large part by organisations across the public and private sector accepting trans lobby groups such as Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids as reliable guides to the law and, at their behest, empowering a cadre of workplace activists to enforce trans ideology through internal networks. It became taboo to acknowledge that biological sex is real and matters, in particular for women’s rights. The very idea that women need single-sex spaces became unsayable. 

Since the judgment, these lobby groups have given up even trying to present themselves as trustworthy guides to the law. Instead they are retreating into activist mode, denouncing the law itself. The result is an explosion of theatrical outrage, in which upholding women’s rights is presented as cruelty rather than an ethical and legal imperative. 

This puts employers in a bind – one of their own making, but no easier to handle for all that. Even as senior leaders are waking up to the need to rewrite policies and remove unlawful material from their websites and staff handbooks, they are afraid of provoking the wrath of the trans lobby and the internal activist networks to which they handed so much power. And so many are doing the right thing, but as stealthily as possible. 

That means no apologies, no accountability and no reckoning with the culture of workplace bullying they permitted, even encouraged. This cowardly response reveals a deeper institutional malaise: a refusal to reckon with the consequences of years spent ignoring the importance of biological sex in policy and practice.