A new UK code of practice states that people must use facilities such as toilets and changing rooms according to their biological sex. The move by the Equality and Human Rights Commission follows a Supreme Court judgement last April and has been welcomed by groups campaigning for sex-based rights. But critics say the code is difficult to implement, unworkable in practice and could lead to discrimination against trans people.

How will it be implemented?
The guidelines apply to venues including cafes, public toilets and rape-crisis shelters, covering England, Scotland and Wales. The code “does not impose legal obligations”, nor is it a “statement of the law”, said lawyers at Pinsent Mason, but it can be “used in evidence in legal proceedings”.

Nearly 13,000 toilets and more than 5,000 changing rooms nationwide might need to be “revamped”, said Sky News. Building work could cost more than £14 million per year, an analysis by the Press Association suggests, and cleaning the new facilities could cost public sector bodies a further £20 million. 

What does it mean for trans people?
Service providers might be able to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces if they decide that someone could “object” to their presence. If trans women are allowed into a women-only space, that space will no longer legally qualify as a women-only service under the Equality Act. The code also notes that forcing a trans person to use services related to biological sex could amount to discrimination.

What has been the reaction?
The guidance is “unworkable” and could “lead to widespread harm for trans people and those who don’t conform to gender stereotypes”, said a spokesperson for the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. It also “puts businesses and charities in the crossfire of endless litigation”.

Legal action on how the code is implemented is likely, both from those who “think the guidance itself is wrong” and from gender-critical groups who “will want to challenge any organisations” accused of not complying, said the BBC. “The law is clear,” said Maya Forstater from sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, “and the code is practical, giving many examples that apply to everyday services.”

Andy Burnham has said his radical plans to devolve power away from Westminster will “increase the case” for a written constitution. The current system “disempowers” areas that have suffered from decades of neglect by central government, the PM argued. A desire for equal standards across the country must be the “cornerstone” of any constitutional settlement.

‘Crisis of trust between citizens and state’
The UK’s current unwritten constitution is made up of a “vast and contradictory morass of legal statutes, court precedents, codes of conduct, scholarly opinions, treaties, traditions, gentlemen’s agreements and unwritten rules”, said George Monbiot in The Guardian. This “allows great scope for interpretation, which ruthless operators readily exploit”: there is nothing to stop a government with a safe majority from turning the UK into a “blatantly authoritarian” state.

Constitutional reform is “unlikely to be a hot topic or a big vote winner at the next election”, said Lucy Jolin in the Cambridge University alumni magazine CAM. But the process of agreeing a new constitution could “be a tool to address a very obvious crisis that governments across the world are facing: a crisis of trust between citizens and state”.

‘Virtually nothing is off the table’
Recent crises – from Brexit and the attempted prorogation of Parliament by Boris Johnson to Covid – have put the UK’s constitution into the spotlight. But, “far from being inadequate, irrelevant or even damaging”, it has “performed adequately – if not admirably at times”, said Brian Jones in a 2023 paper for the Institute for Government and Bennett Institute for Public Policy. In this system, “virtually nothing is off the table”, so it is better suited to adapting to “political, legal, economic and cultural change”.

The “flexibility” of the British constitution means Burnham, having never won a general election, can “simply announce a whole series of reforms to devolution in England”, said historian Lee David Evans on UnHerd. If the UK had a written constitution, with “rigid” relationships between authorities, Burnham’s recent policy announcements would be “much more difficult” to enact, “perhaps even practically impossible”.

Military personnel prepare food during a mobilisation drill in Pitou Township in central Taiwan. The annual Han Kuang war games, which run for 10 days, are intended to prepare troops and reservists for a potential Chinese invasion of the self-governed island.

Cheng Yu-chen / AFP / Getty Images

Matthew Bourne’s “steamy, sweaty, lust-drenched thriller” of a dance show is perfect for this long, hot summer, said Marianka Swain in The Telegraph. Inspired by Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen” and with the “pulp-noir aesthetic” of films like “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, this “devilishly entertaining” dance production was first staged in 2000 and is now back on tour.

In the tiny, fictional Midwestern town of Harmony, we meet the “beautiful young” Lana, who is unhappily married to “boorish” garage owner Dino. When “hunky stranger” Luca “swaggers into town”, he manages to seduce both Lana and the “sensitive” Angelo, who works at Dino’s garage. A “combustible blend of desire, revenge, jealousy and murder” follows, adding up to a “blistering summer scorcher of a show”.

More than 25 years have passed since “The Car Man” first debuted. but it still feels “fresh”, said Rachel Agyekum on WhatsOnStage. Harrison Dowzell is “magnetic” as Luca, moving with a confidence that makes it “impossible to look away”. His chemistry with Lana (Cordelia Braithwaite) and fellow mechanic Angelo (Leonardo McCorkindale) is “undeniable”.

This is a “thrillingly charged” production, said Siobhan Murphy on The Stage. Lez Brotherston’s “ingenious” set designs shift seamlessly from a “scuzzy garage” to a “forbidding prison”, and the cast tackle their “robust dance roles with aplomb”. Bourne throws in some “suitably melodramatic Shakespearean touches” and a fair bit of “wry humour” as the production flies towards its “inevitable tragic ending”. This is the choreographer “firing on all cylinders”.

Why are young women using walking sticks?
Kathleen Stock in The Times
Canes have become “the unironic preserve of vulnerable looking girls”, writes Kathleen Stock, but “what kind of pain” they’re in, and why, “remains unclear”. Do Gen Z females have “strangely unstable bodies”? Many seem to “share the same non-specific symptoms” that are “also symptoms of anxiety, the defining emotion of teenage years”. Could they be “in the grip of social contagion”? Girls with chronic illnesses do “tend to be disbelieved”, but “certain kinds of disability” can be “socially created”.

This Hiroshima Day, we are closer than ever to nuclear war
Morning Star’s editorial board
Today we remember the “atrocity” visited on Hiroshima exactly 80 years ago, says the Morning Star. The “horror of nuclear war that grew” from the city’s “radioactive ruins” has been “strong enough to prevent a repeat performance – so far”. But “there is no room for complacency”. Our “leaders are casually confrontational”, either from “a false sense of security” or a “bloodthirsty” nature. We must “build a powerful movement for peace and disarmament”.

The Abominable Snowman will never die
Theodore Dalrymple in The Telegraph
“For quite a lot of people, Nature is not marvellous enough,” writes Theodore Dalrymple. They want “mysterious, evasive and humanoid hairy monsters”, such as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman and the Yeti. I’ve a “sneaking admiration” for the cryptozoologists who search for these mythical creatures, but only while their “existence remains a possibility, but is not proved”, can we continue our fantasies. “We shall never fully believe that the Yeti does not exist, because we want it to exist.”