This statement of the blindingly obvious

At long last, the guidance.

Finally, the Government’s long-awaited guidance on protecting single-sex spaces has been published. And it’s a bit of an anti-climax. There are no suffragette banners or burning bras. Instead, after a 13-month wait, we’ve been treated to a bland written statement, delivered to Parliament by Bridget Phillipson wearing her Minister for Women and Equalities hat.

So seemingly begrudging is Phillipson’s acknowledgement that she has “approved the draft code” that we can almost see the accompanying grimace. Turn to it, and it is easy to see why. It makes clear that sex “refers to a male or a female of any age” and that “in relation to a group of people it refers to either men and/or boys, or women and /or girls”. This statement of the blindingly obvious should not be radical. But it so terrifies Labour’s activist set that Phillipson, for months, sat on her hands.

Labour’s trans-obsessed set, that is. Activism per se is not a bad thing; the issue is what the activism is in aid of.

On Thursday, all out of excuses, Phillipson could dither no more. It has fallen to her to instruct those in charge of schools, hospitals, and prisons that “sex means biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010”, with the proviso “that trans people are still protected by the Act under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’”. But, crucially, “A Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) does not change a person’s sex for the purposes of the Act”.

Doesn’t change it for any other purposes either. Nothing changes a person’s sex. We can’t change species, and we can’t change sex. We can’t become rocks or planets or stars; we can’t become ducks or petunias or the Taj Mahal.

Of course, it’s not just Phillipson. From the Prime Minister down, the entire Labour Party seems to have believed six impossible things about sex and gender before breakfast. With so many about-turns to make, it is hardly surprising that Phillipson has dithered, and guidance has been pushed out on the final day before Parliament breaks for recess.

But this delay has had real consequences. Across Britain, hospitals have continued to allow trans-identifying biological males to use women-only spaces such as wards, changing rooms and lavatories. Nurses like those from Darlington have been forced to fight expensive legal battles to ensure access to single-sex changing rooms. In Yorkshire, a mother had to sue her daughter’s all-girls school after it “secretly” admitted a boy who identified as female.

Yeah well. They’re all just women, so it doesn’t matter.

Even now, Phillipson’s interference helps explain why the EHRC’s code of practice runs to many pages, with multiple examples and plentiful caveats. One of the “tweaks” she demanded was more examples of how organisations can be “inclusive” and ensure that trans people have access to toilets and changing rooms.

And so we have bizarre details of the circumstances in which someone can be asked to clarify their sex. The code states: “Evidence of such concern might include the individual’s physique or physical appearance, behaviour or concerns raised by other service users.” In other words, if someone looks like a man, then they might be a man. Most four-year-olds know this!

Playing dress-up is all very well, but when adults do it they can run into complications.