Britain's Conservative party leadership race is turning into a transphobic spectacle
CNN
Britain's Conservative leadership contest kicked off this week, a weeks-long process that will result in the country's next prime minister. Besides the standard pledges of tax cuts or a slimmed down state, there has also been an enthusiastic promotion of anti-trans positions, potentially marking an intensification of the current government's "war on woke."
Leading the pack of hopefuls is Rishi Sunak, Britain's former Chancellor of the Exchequer whose resignation from the government last week contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. After the second round of voting among Conservative Party lawmakers earlier this month, Sunak topped the list of the five candidates who remain in the running.
One of Sunak's first policy pledges, after he announced his intention to run, was protecting "women's rights," he wrote in a Twitter post, linking to an article in which an unnamed Sunak ally was quoted as saying the lawmaker was "critical of recent trends to erase women via the use of clumsy, gender-neutral language."