Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has handed a life peerage to ex-Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies.
The 62-year-old won silver at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. But more recently she’s become known for her campaign against trans women competing in women’s sports.
Davies was named yesterday alongside 33 other new peers. Keir Starmer nominated 25 Labour peers, the Lib Dems put forward five, and Badenoch nominated three, including Davies.
The announcement came Tuesday. The government website listed Davies as “Sharron Davies MBE, Campaigner for Women’s Rights and Olympic Swimming Silver Medallist for Great Britain.”
Davies said it would be “exciting to carry on fighting for women’s rights and safeguarding as well as trying to get as many kids, in particular, doing sport as possible.”
Her dad’s nearly 90 and still coaches kids’ swimming. He’ll see her take her seat in the Lords. Davies said she was “obviously very proud” that her dad would witness this “huge family honour.”
Badenoch said Davies “thoroughly deserves this recognition” and praised her “tireless advocacy.” The Tory leader added “we need more Sharrons.”
Davies began campaigning in 2019, when the I.O.C. loosened its rules and scrapped a requirement for athletes who compete as women to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.
She’s since written letters to sporting bodies signed by dozens of world-class athletes urging them to ban biological males from female events.
She’s faced serious backlash. In February of this year, she broke down in tears at a conference in Paris. She had been the object of death threats because of her campaigning. “People think I’m this strong, competitive athlete and advocate but it couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said. I am as sensitive as the next woman, and of course I get upset.”
Davies has clashed with the BBC too. She’s claimed the broadcaster is being “held to ransom” by trans activists. She criticised them after they upheld complaints against newsreader Martine Croxall for changing the term “pregnant people” to “women” during a broadcast in June.
The peerage comes after a Supreme Court ruling in April that said “women” refers to biological sex rather than gender identity. Davies has been vocal about wanting sports bodies to implement that ruling.
About 30 UK sports still don’t protect the female category according to Davies. She’s threatened legal action against sporting organisations that fail to abide by what she calls “sporting sex laws.”
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Labour nominated several high profile figures including Richard Walker, chairman of Iceland supermarkets, and Matthew Doyle, former Number 10 communications director. Rachel Reeves’s ex-chief of staff Katie Martin also got a peerage.
A source added, “The Lords appointments will reduce the imbalance in the House of Lords.” Conservatives now have 282 peers to Labour’s 209, despite Labour being in the majority in the Commons.
The new peers must be vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission before they can take their seats. This is typically a mere formality.
Davies is to be joined by Conservative nominees, former Tory cabinet minister Sir John Redwood and journalist Simon Heffer.
Not everyone’s thrilled. She has been criticised for “fuelling hate” in her views on trans athletes. In 2019, she claimed not to be transphobic, maintaining that she has “nothing against anyone who wishes to be transgender” but insists that there is a “fundamental difference between the binary sex you’re born with and the gender you may identify as.”
She has also been suspended as patron of Shekinah, a Devon homelessness charity, after saying that decriminalising rough sleeping was a “big mistake.”
Davies’s appointment offers her a permanent platform to carry on campaigning for women’s sport and rights.
The impact can be either positive or negative, depending on your perspective. The swimmer from Plymouth who made her Olympic debut at the age of 13 is heading to Westminster. And she’s made clear that she does not plan to back down.