Aretha Franklin’s 1967 hit ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ should be removed from the music streaming network Spotify because it perpetuates anti-trans stereotypes, according to a whole bunch of alphabet people with too much time on their hands.

The spearhead of this attack on the Queen of Soul’s famous hit is a Norwegian group called the Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance (TCMA), who you may not have heard of but with whom I’m sure you’d get on just fine. There is no such thing as a ‘natural woman’, you see. Quite why they picked this particular song is moot because almost every pop song ever released similarly perpetuates anti-trans stereotypes, apart from maybe ‘Festering Pus’ by Rancid Hell Spawn. It is a peculiar hill upon which to make a stand, but then the alphabet people were never known for their logic. Do the TCMA and others therefore believe that a man who transitions to being a female can never feel like a ‘natural woman’? In which case, isn’t that a bit of a giveaway?

More pertinently, there is the authorship of the song. The melody – a typically canny slab of Brill Building hackery masquerading as blue-eyed soul – was written by Carole King. But the lyrics were actually written by a man, her long-time collaborator Gerry Goffin. Seen through this prism, the song might take on an entirely different meaning. For instance, it could be a paean of praise from a man who is transitioning to his surgeon at the Tavistock clinic who has just fabricated an entire lady garden for his patient from the remains of a cunningly inverted scrotum. ‘You make me feel, you make me FEEL!’ Aretha caterwauls and it is the cry of someone who has been perhaps literally transformed. Anyway, just wait until they hear about Whitney Houston’s somewhat solipsistic ‘I’m Every Woman’. No you’re not! How dare you!

The TCMA now belatedly claims the whole thing was a joke, but who on earth can tell these days? I assume the people hoping to stand as Tory candidates at the next election have already removed ‘Natural Woman’ from their playlists, having been instructed to do so by Conservative HQ. The Daily Telegraph has reported that candidates are advised, via the party’s online training platform, to learn how to apply gender terminology correctly. Spurious racial idiocies dominate much of this module, with candidates being told that it is racist to ask a black person: ‘Are you able to sit out in the sun as long without any sun cream?’ They are then quizzed on their obedience to this absurdist ideology, with a ‘fill in the blanks’ section. ‘As well as experiencing racial discrimination ____ ______ is also a significant problem for BAME employees’, with the correct answer being ‘white resentment’.

The theme of supposed white resentment continues with candidates asked how they should respond if a BAME person accuses them of harbouring this confected, imaginary emotion. The correct answer is to break their spectacles and spit on their shoes but, strangely, this is not the advice given. Instead the candidates should ‘react positively and thank the person’. I was mildly surprised that there was no warning regarding asking intrusive questions about a person of colour’s dealings with the Inland Revenue, although maybe I missed that section.

Why are they doing this? The party has already committed itself to banishing the divisive, corrosive and unpleasant wokeism perpetuated by groups such as Stonewall. In general it seems to show no enthusiasm for the wallowing in victimhood of critical race theory and the like. The diversity of the cabinet (especially compared with the Labour front bench) and the fact that we have a prime minister of Asian descent and a foreign secretary of part-African descent seem to me to be a fairly potent expression of how the inclusive, colour-blind Conservative way of addressing the supposed racial divide is far, far more successful than the endless resentment-filled bleating and whining and overt racism of the left.

Moreover, this approach is much more popular with the voters – a group of people currently estranged from the party, and who need to be enticed back. So what possible purpose does this training module have, unless it is to identify all the people who tick the right boxes and make sure they never get anywhere near a shortlist as long as they live? Were I an aspiring Tory candidate directed to this training programme I would leave the party immediately. If the Conservative party is not going to stand up against this corporate, top-down progressive bullying, then who is?

The problem, of course, is that once you’ve read about its stupid module, your mind clicks into gear and you remember everything else it has done since 2010. It was not a Labour government that sanctioned horrible, invasive medical treatment for young people at the Tavistock clinic. Nor was it Labour that allowed tendentious pro-transitioning propaganda to thrive in our schools under the auspices of PSHE. Labour didn’t allow trans women who had committed crimes into female-only prisons, or trans women on female wards in hospitals, or trans women to compete against real women in a whole host of sports. All of this happened under a Conservative government which, at the time, said nothing whatsoever about it – just let the progressive left continue with its absurd programme.

I am not saying Labour would have done things differently – the jury is still out on Sir Keir Starmer in this regard; simply that if you are opposed to this hideous sort of identity politics and mangling of reality, and thought a vote for the Conservatives might ensure a rolling back of this poisonous agenda, you were very sadly mistaken. In the so-called culture war – which is in truth a war against our civilisation – the Tories have been bemusingly complicit.