Transgender debate: Andrew Neil's anger at detransitioned teenager Chloe Cole being turned into a 'monster' by zealous medics can help end this madness– Susan Dalgety

Today, he is best known for his ferocious interviewing style which he honed at the BBC and now practices on Channel 4 in a weekly show called – what else? – The Andrew Neil Show. He has a bulging contacts book, homes in France, New York and London, and has never been afraid to offer his opinion on controversial issues from climate change to the monarchy.

Yet this urbane, well-connected, influential man – like most of his peers – had given little thought to the debate around gender ideology that has dominated so many women’s lives these past few years. Until last week that is, when he watched a video of a young American, Chloe Cole, giving evidence to a US congressional committee about how she had been given puberty blockers at 13, and at 15 had undergone a double mastectomy (known colloquially as ‘top surgery’) because she was convinced she was male.

Now, at 18, she describes herself as a “monster”, her female body ruined by zealous medics who – for whatever reason – have swallowed the myth that a person’s sex can be changed by surgery and drugs. “This is heart-breaking. It is barbaric. What have we become?” asked Neil on social media, followed by a second post where he admitted that he had no idea “such things” could be done to young, vulnerable people. “I feel ashamed and angry. It must be stopped,” he declared, and just like that Neil became an honorary Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

Writing in a national newspaper, he offered himself as a foot soldier in the so-called culture war between transgender activists and women’s rights campaigners, promising to help expose the medical and societal scandal that sees young people mutilated in the name of progress. “I'm ready for the further abuse that awaits me…Frankly, it's water off a duck's back. And it's never as brutal against men as it is women, which speaks volumes for those dishing out the abuse,” he wrote.

His sudden conversion to the cause was met with some scepticism and not a little anger by many of the women who have campaigned for years against gender ideology and its most insidious aspect, the medical and social transition of vulnerable young people. Me included. But on reflection, I am delighted that Neil has joined us on the battlefield. He will prove a useful ally.

His intervention came in the week that popular high street chain Costa Coffee unveiled its latest marketing ploy, a Costa Express van emblazoned with a cartoon of a young woman with a double mastectomy. Celebrating a vulnerable girl’s mental illness to sell cappuccinos is frankly sick. And dangerous, as Sinead Watson from Glasgow – who endured a double mastectomy several years ago, but has since de-transitioned – wrote a few days ago.

“There is absolutely nothing glamorous about having your breasts removed. I should know. I only have to look in the mirror to see what a transitioned chest looks like,” she explained. “Rather than resembling a man's, it looks like a woman's chest that has been sliced open with a scalpel. And that's precisely what it is – maimed and disfigured. I went through this surgery six years ago when I transitioned into a man. It was a catastrophic mistake which, now that I have fully de-transitioned, I regret every single day of my life.”

Thanks largely to courageous campaigners like Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder and director of Transgender Trend, politicians in England have woken up to the scandal of medical staff simply affirming a young person’s gender dysphoria – often by prescribing hormone treatment and surgery rather than trying to treat their emotional distress.

In 2020, NHS England appointed the prominent paediatrician, Dr Hilary Cass OBE, to undertake a review of gender identity services (Gids) for children and young people. Her interim report, published last year, found that the current service was unsustainable and needed reform. NHS England has already taken on board some of the review’s early recommendations, including the closure of the controversial Tavistock Clinic in London and a ban on the routine use of puberty-suppressing hormones for children and adolescents. A public consultation on the proposal to curtail hormone treatment was launched on Thursday.

But in Scotland, politicians have been slow to tackle the issue, afraid it seems of upsetting the influential transgender lobby. Recommended guidance, produced last year by NHS National Services Scotland, supports the ‘affirming’ model of healthcare, where GPs can prescribe puberty blockers simply because their teenage patients say they were born in the wrong body. The Scottish Government insists the report, entitled the Scottish Pathway to Trans Healthcare (Spath), is being “carefully considered”, presumably as part of the new guidelines for gender identity healthcare services, due to be published by the summer of 2024.

Meanwhile, young women like Sinead are still being prescribed ‘top surgery’ and puberty blockers, and Scotland’s Tavistock – the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow – remains open for business. And government ministers boast about their ground-breaking transgender guidance for schools. Social transitioning, where children change their gender by changing their name and appearance, is actively supported by many schools across Scotland, sometimes without the knowledge of a child’s parents.

So, Andrew Neil, don’t be ashamed it took you so long to join the battle. But do remain angry, because it is only our righteous anger that will bring this madness to an end.