The daughter of Kate Garraway's new love interest Liam Halligan has gained popularity online after her speech criticizing the gay rights movement for joining the trans lobby. 

Maeve Halligan, 23, spoke at the Cambridge Union where it was being debated that modern LGBTQ+ activism was failing its own community. 

The daughter of the British economist and journalist, who is also the president of the Cambridge University Society for Women, argued modern activism had along the way 'decided that gay people were the problem'.

And while she maintained the initial gay rights liberation movement was not 'misguided' and that progress had been made, Ms Halligan said it had 'abandoned gay, lesbian and bisexual people'. 

Insisting 'at best' LGBTQ+ activism had lost its way, she maintained it was children who were increasingly 'paying the highest price' for what she argued to be 'the abandonment' by that same movement. 

Referencing a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2025 that concluded the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, Ms Halligan pressed it is 'the law, and also happens to be the science'.

'Modern LGBTQ+ Activism has spent the better part of a decade now,' she told the Union. 'Let's be honest trying to erase that fact because if sex is real, and is immutable - a whole lot of what they have been doing falls apart.'

Her recent appearance comes as her father Liam Halligan told of the 'definite spark' between himself and Kate Garraway, divulging that they have 'much in common' despite having worked in 'different parts of the media'. 

Last week, the Good Morning Britain presenter, 59, was seen looking smitten with Mr Halligan, who has brought a smile to her face two years after she tragically lost her husband Derek Draper to complications from Covid-19 in January 2024. 

Meanwhile, her new partner's daughter revealed she had been branded a fascist, insulted in public and received threats of rape as well as death for founding her university society. 

'A woman trying to assert her sex based rights and those of her peers gets abused for doing so,' Ms Halligan said. 

'This is one of the many horrifically logical impacts, conclusions of modern LGBTQ+ activism. A movement that has lost its way at best.'

When citing a 2022 legal challenge brought against the founders of the LGB alliance, Kate Harris and Eileen Gallagher by trans group, Mermaids, she said modern LGBT+ activism 'eats itself'. 

The transgender charity had tried to get the LGB alliance struck off the charity register, describing it as having an 'anti-trans focus'. This legal challenge was later dismissed as a tribunal ruled Mermaids was not entitled to bring the case. 

Ms Halligan also argued funding of LBTQ+ organisations had shifted 'rapidly' away from gay and lesbian rights towards what she described as a 'nebulousTQ+' without input from the communities they represent. 

'There are over 60 countries, most of which are in the global south where homosexuality is still illegal,' she said. 

'The parochial LGBTQ lobby here cares much more about pronouns and adding 57 letters to an acronym that we are all already stumbling over.'

Describing it as 'frustrating' and 'hyper-introspective', Ms Halligan insisted there were 'bigger, real issues'.

She also accused Stonewall of running seminars on lesbians overcoming resistance to trans men.  

'I will let you decide what word you want to use for that, I will ask you directly - does the word progressive come to mind?'

'The movement that was supposed to protect lesbians has instead providing ideological cover for them to be coerced.'

She also referenced the Cass Review, a NHS-backed report which found between 60 and 80 per cent of children referred to the Gender Identity Development Service were same-sex attracted. 

'A cohort of children who in an earlier era before this modern activism would very likely have grown up to be gay or lesbian,' she added. 

'But instead they were placed on a medical pathway involving puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and in some cases surgeries.

She argued clinicians who raised concerns at the Tavistock's GIDS  were marginalised, with one claiming there was a joke among staff that there would be no 'gay people left' amid the increasing rate of referrals.

'It's a remarkable manoeuvre, maybe even wily. Make the protection of children synonymous with bigotry and watch very reasonable people go quiet.'

She added: 'They are being failed by the people who claim to protect them.

'I think you have been sold a story, a comfortable lie in which being progressive means never questioning the dominant institutional line.

'And it is a line in which compassion is equated with compliance, but real compassion asks hard questions.

'Real advocacy protects the people it claims to represent even when thats inconvenient. 

'Real activism doesn't silence lesbians, medicalise children or tell a little boy who plays with dolls that he is actually a girl.

She continued: 'Don't tell me to be kind if being kind involves lying to and medicalising kids, betraying lesbian and gay people, rolling back women's hard fought for rights and hurling threats at those who object.

'Again hatred you talk about it, try being a woman who knows what one of those is [sic].'

After posting the video of her debate to X, Ms Halligan has received an outpour of support with one describing her message as 'powerful' and 'well put'. 

'Well said, Maeve! Impressive speech, and very well orated. Impressive,' one wrote as another dubbed it a 'powerful watch'.  

It comes as her father and Ms Garraway were seen giggling and cuddling up together last weekend as Kate supported him as he took part in the Duchenne Dash, an annual charity cycle ride to Paris.

Mr Halligan said he was 'flabbergasted' to find himself the subject of showbiz news – using the same word that Ms Garraway was mocked by Tom Daley for using on Celebrity Traitors last year.

'As a sandwich-board man of the business pages, I'm flabbergasted to be in the showbiz sections,' he wrote in his Spectator column this week.

Nobody wanted to know about my warnings of market meltdown but reporters now follow me around, asking: "How's it going with Kate?"

He said: 'Kate Garraway and I are from different parts of the media but have much in common – not least a shared sense of humour.

'Though it's early days, there's a definite spark between us.'

In reference to his recent bike ride, he joked: 'But can she ride a tandem?'

While Kate is yet to speak on the romance, Liam recently admitted the pair had become 'good friends' after both becoming 'single, against our wishes' in recent years.