Can you talk seriously about sex? No stupid jokes, no laughing. Can you?

As it turns out, a chain of events can both be entirely predictable yet still remain a bitter disappointment. Had you asked me last week how the British political sphere would react to the idea of a campaign encouraging people to talk openly about sex, I suspect I would have had to bring my shoulders all the way back down from my ears, then said something along the lines of: oh, good lord.

The idea is obviously a good one, but – I reckon I would have felt comfortable betting most of my savings on this – you just couldn’t trust people here to actually welcome it or be adults about it.

And lo, it came to pass. Earlier this week, Labour MP Samantha Niblett announced that she was teaming up with entrepreneur Cindy Gallop to launch a “summer of sex”, as part of a broader “Yes, Sex Please! We’re British” campaign.

Her goal is to promote sexual education at all stages of life, and make sure that people can talk about the topic openly, no matter their age or the problems they may be facing.

So far, the response has been… well. The Guardian published a sketch on it, focusing in part on the news that Niblett wants to bring sex toys into Portcullis House over summer recess, as a way to try and remove shame and stigma from sexual pleasure. “Quite where all the toys will be coming from is not clear. Will they all be brand new, with sales reps be taking orders from passing MPs, lords, researchers and journalists? Or will they all be – ahem – pre-loved?” the piece asked. “In which case it’s to be hoped they have been thoroughly washed.” Yawn.

The Times, meanwhile, decided to go all out, publishing a scathing leader on the topic. In it, they argued – somewhat ironically – that “politicians should act like grown-ups, not hormone-crazed teenagers”.

Elsewhere, fellow Labour MP Tom Hayes was asked about his colleague’s plans and said that “for me, it’s not about the summer of sex. It is about an all-year-round, round-the-clock focus on the cost of living,” adding that his constituents don’t want to “talk dirty – I think they want to talk defence”.

The retort would have been eyeroll-worthy in any context, but the fact that it came from a politician who once said he took all forms of violence against women and girls “extremely seriously” is especially disappointing.

A few months after his election in 2024, Hayes vowed to work so his constituency would stop being “particularly” unsafe for women. Sure, his main focus then was to try and work with the police to stop perpetrators, but does he really believe that the men committing these attacks were born and bred in a vacuum?

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Of course, you could argue that Niblett knew what she was doing when she decided to make her campaign sound raunchier than it is. Isn’t that what everyone else does in Westminster, though? The backbencher is hardly the first person to try and catch the attention of journalists in any way possible. If stunts and overly candid interviews are accepted in other areas of life, then why must they be out of bounds when the topic is sex?

After all, her work really is important, and has the power to – please, for the love of all that is holy, no sniggering at the back – touch just about everyone. As she argued, integrating “relevant, all-inclusive lifelong sex education” into the public health system would help “take the shame, embarrassment and guilt out of talking about sex”. Focusing on issues like consent, healthy communication, boundaries and respect – no matter the life stage – would make people not only happier but also safer.

Perhaps most importantly, it would hopefully begin to address the elephant in the room, namely: online pornography. We somehow live in a world where politicians and hacks blush and giggle as an MP mentions lovemaking, yet it has become easier than ever to watch just about any kind of degrading, dangerous graphic content on the internet.

Prudes may find the idea of bringing dildos into Parliament beyond the pale, but they must reckon with the fact that we live in a world where millions of people – millions of men – are having their brains melted by extreme online porn every single week.

Just as teaching abstinence never stopped teens from going at it with each other, trying to pretend the world hasn’t changed and sex ed only needs to vaguely happen at some point in high school just won’t work. All we have to hope for now is that Niblett hasn’t been discouraged by the reception her campaign has received so far, and that she keeps fighting the good fight.