Sharron Davies Among Three New Conservative Peers

Kemi Badenoch is to appoint the Olympic medal-winning swimmer and gender-critical campaigner Sharron Davies as a Conservative peer. The Times has more.

The Conservative leader has nominated Davies, alongside the columnist Simon Heffer and the Tory treasurer Graham Edwards, for the next round of House of Lords appointments that are due to be announced in the autumn.

She will become the latest former athlete to enter the upper house, joining the former 1,500 metres champion Lord Coe and the Paralympian Baroness Grey-Thompson.

Davies has become an outspoken campaigner for women’s rights in sport, warning of the risk of transgender athletes being able to self-identify. Two years ago she warned that “mediocre male athletes” were “stealing” medals from women and girls by self-identifying as the opposite gender.

Davies got to know Badenoch when the latter was equalities minister and instigated moves to tighten up the law around self-identification. This month she said that she could “testify personally” to Badenoch being one of the very first ministers to “push back against woke”.

“[She was] always fighting to maintain women’s sports,” she said.

Davies also backed Badenoch for the Conservative leadership describing her as a “fresh, brave and intelligent woman who’s prepared to tackle issues head-on so many have ignored for too long”.

Davies was one of the UK’s most successful swimmers in the 1970s and early 1980s, winning two gold medals at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and finishing second in the individual medley at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Worth reading in full.