Peter Tatchell has discovered just how cowardly the NUS can be

Taking petulance to dizzy new heights, the LGBT officer of the National Union of Students has refused to share a platform with Peter Tatchell because she doesn’t like some of his views. Yes, the self-styled spokesperson for gay students is snubbing a man who has spent 40-odd years agitating for gay rights. Tatchell has been denounced, defamed and duffed-up in his struggle to give gay people a voice, and how do radical young gay people choose to use that voice? To bitch about him. To insult the man who helped secure their liberation. It’s ungratefulness of oceangoing proportions.

Fran Cowling, the NUS bureaucrat, pulled out of a panel debate with Tatchell on the basis that he is transphobic and racist. He isn’t, of course. These are simply the McCarthyite slurs of a cranky student leadership that polices language with cult-like vigour and refuses to tolerate anyone who doesn’t 100 percent subscribe to its weird worldview.