The celeb ‘trans rights’ concert could hardly be more tone-deaf

In March of next year, London’s Wembley Arena is set to host ‘Trans Mission’ – a star-studded charity concert in aid of ‘transgender rights’. Artists slated to make an appearance include the Sugababes, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Wolf Alice and Kate Nash. The line-up also features a host of celebrity guest appearances, from actors Ian McKellen and Russell Tovey to Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

Trans Mission has been put together by actor, singer and Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander, who himself identifies as ‘gay and queer and nonbinary’. The event is being held in direct response to April’s UK Supreme Court ruling, which found that the word ‘woman’, as per the Equality Act 2010, refers to biological sex (shock horror!). Responding to this victory for women’s rights, Alexander expressed in a statement that ‘real and lasting change’ is now needed. Apparently, we all have a responsibility to ‘fight back against the politics of fear and exclusion’ that is supposedly affecting the trans community.

Working with the Mighty Hoopla festival, Alexander hopes to raise funds for Not a Phase – a charity offering social events for ‘gender-diverse adults’ and workshops on ‘trans+ inclusion’ – and Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project. The latter is a hyper-partisan lawfare outfit masquerading as a charity, which routinely loses cases while burning through donors’ money. The Good Law Project has consistently pushed for British children to be allowed to access puberty blockers, despite the clear harms that were identified in the Cass Review back in 2024.

Glyn Fussell and Jamie Tagg, co-founders of the Mighty Hoopla festival, claim the show will ‘not only fundraise, but also publicly stand with the trans community who are under daily attack’ – a statement which might be hilarious if it weren’t so galling. Far from being under ‘constant attack’ in Britain, trans people are a legally protected class. Activists have succeeded in having the English language mangled in order to fit in line with their fantasies. Male trans-identified athletes have enjoyed years of dominating women’s sports. Men who make a fetishistic mockery of women’s bodily functions, from menstrual cycles to pregnancy and breastfeeding, are routinely hailed as brave and courageous in supine media outlets.

And now the trans community is to be celebrated at one of the most legendary venues in the world by the stars of the UK music scene. Indeed, in the arts, promoting gender ideology is not merely encouraged but also mandatory. Gender heretics like author JK Rowling, comedy writer Graham Linehan and musician Róisín Murphy can tell you what it’s really like to be ‘under daily attack’.

‘This is about allyship, empathy and holding up those we love’, say Fussell and Tagg, perfectly encapsulating what I’m sure will be the tone of the glitterati-fest in March. Here we have a bunch of wealthy luvvies who want us to believe that holding this concert is an act of almost revolutionary courage, when they are actually backing the safest position imaginable. They are courting no professional risk whatsoever in repeating the slogans of the rainbow lobby. Even as the harms trans dogma causes to women and children become more obvious by the day, the celebs will continue to prance around in thigh-highs and sequins – one hand on the mic, while the other wags a berating finger at anyone who dares to reject this damaging ideology. ‘Tone deaf’ doesn’t cover it.

Georgina Mumford is an editorial assistant at spiked.