Craig and Charlie Reid, who make up the beloved Scottish rock duo The Proclaimers, best known for their 1988 hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” denounced trans rights while promoting their new album, claiming the movement for equality is merely “the Left losing their collective mind.”
The 64-year-old twin brothers discussed their new and staunchly political album, You May Offend, with The Telegraph earlier this month. While the songs express several views that veer left, they made clear in their interview that they do not support trans rights.
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Craig Reid said that in May’s parliamentary elections, he didn’t vote for the Scottish National Party for the first time since 1983 due to the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in 2022, which sought to make it easier for people to change their legally recognized gender by removing the requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
While it passed with a parliamentary majority, the UK government blocked its implementation by refusing to give it Royal Assent.
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Despite the law never taking effect, Craig Reid claimed, “It’s so badly done that it inevitably led to violent men, including convicted rapists, being sent to women’s prison. For me, that is unforgivable.”
“There’s women, actual women, who are threatened with violence – sometimes get violence – and de-platformed because they have the temerity to say that a woman is an adult human female,” Craig Reid added. “And they are shouted down by 0.5 percent in a population who are male and who think that because they put on a dress, and they put on make-up, that that makes them a female.”
Charlie Reid added that people have “the right to stand up for science and logic,” and called it a “tragedy” that anti-trans comedy writer and activist Graham Linehan “lost his career for telling the truth.”
The Reids lamented that people are being skewered for sharing their opinions, and they believe freedom of speech is at stake. Charlie Reid slammed Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint for distancing themselves from anti-trans author J.K. Rowling without at least saying that she has a right to say what she thinks.
“It was not necessary that each of them stood up and agreed with her,” he said. “But you would have thought someone would stand up and say, ‘We live in a free country. Thank goodness we have freedom of speech. She is exercising her right to a point of view. I do not necessarily support it. But I support her right to say something.’ I don’t remember any of them saying anything [like that].”
Craig Reid added that he thinks Rowling is “absolutely right on women’s rights.” Rowling believes giving trans women rights is a direct threat to cisgender women.
Nevertheless, he declared in the interview, “I’m not transphobic,” while in the next sentence defining a trans woman as “a man identifying as a woman, dressing as a woman.”
“I’m not against any of that,” he claimed. “All I’m against is saying that he actually is a woman when he’s not a woman. A lot of these folk are basically truth-phobic. They’ll deny the biological reality. Then if you insist on it, they’ll say that you are hurting their feelings. That you’re disrespecting them. But I respect reality and scientific fact, not myth.”
He added that he’s not right-wing and that the movement for trans rights is just “the Left losing their collective mind.”
“You can agree with some people on almost everything, and you can agree with other people on maybe one or two subjects. But it doesn’t mean [you agree with everything].”
“You have to have freedom of thought.”
Their new album’s title track, they said, was inspired by their belief in free speech and their horror that folks are being “canceled” for opposing trans rights.
The song states, “As you breathe, as you grow, as you ascend/You lose count of the fools you may offend/Just by giving out the thoughts in your head/You may reach a point where some will wish you dead.”
The brothers said they’re not worried about offending people with their songs or opinions. “If you’re going to write what you think is the truth,” Craig Reid said, “and then somebody asks you what inspired the songs, or what you think about what’s going on, you’ve got to speak up.”
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