Lisa Nandy: Trans women are women

He’s infuriating

DeathByPuppy Len proves time and time again that he will just dismiss any opinion that doesn’t match his own. This caller obviously had a much better idea of the opinions of Labour voters than Len did during the election campaign...

Unite sec, Len McCluskey, on Andrew Marr arguing that Long-Bailey is the best candidate now to win hearts and minds in the lost heartlands with her commitment to ‘radical’ policies. Despite Marr pointing out that people in the lost heartlands don’t want a ‘continuity Corbyn candidate’ and using a direct quote to back it up. McCluskey in total denial of that being a vote loser, “well of course she [woman quoted] doesn’t want a continuity candidate, she didn’t want Corbyn in the first place”. Completely missing the point that it wasn’t about one woman’s vendetta.

I'm rubbish with politics and only took notice of Nandy's stepping back letter to Corbyn when a number of his cabinet resigned front of house posts and went back to the back benches as she was a childhood friend (don't even know the political terminology!), and I do remember it was specifically because Corbyn was too divisive and she asked him to try to unify the party. She knew they had no chance if they went ultra left wing.

Also, I have been considering that more people voted Tory in the north last time because actually, it makes them take notice of us and our needs. Which it did.

The triggernometry episode is interesting.

@Hulo
Yep - progressive Iranian theocratic trail blazers!

Like Pakistan. Happy bedfellows for Stonewall, Amnesty, Labour, SNP, Greens ... ? Tories - not showing cards yet after consultation???

Perhaps P(l)ink Plonk news could do another video, like they did about Pakistan - extolling the virtues of trans policy state funded physical erasion of the gay population.

Meanwhile the under 5 mortality rate in Pakistan is 74/1000 births. No state money to save the lives of children.

They don’t care about children. Sound familiar anyone?

A little more about how deeply conservative countries (Iran in this case) accept being trans over gay

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29832690

It is to do with the internet and the influence of (deeply conservative) America I feel.
The UK has a great tradition of being pretty accepting of men breaking gender norms, we are culturally and emotionally worlds away from the US, but the US take on transgenderism is having a massive influence on us now. Particularly on those too young to remember the 70s and 80s

That's interesting. The UK isn't a deeply socially conservative country though. Although, maybe more than believed. It does seem to be the case that kids are being convinced they can trans the gay away.
Better trans than gay and all that.

In deeply conservative countries like Pakistan, you are "allowed" to be transgender but not "allowed" to be gay.

RuffleCrow
How So? Do you mean Conservative with a small c?

But TWAW is an extremely conservative social position!

The current Labour candidates are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they said “We are going to end free movement of people, commit to reducing immigration and I believe biological sex exists” they would probably instantly win the support of many disenfranchised Labour voters. However, there is no way that the current Labour membership would support them.

Sadly, they are a pretty uninspiring bunch anyway.

I wonder if that's where voters' expectations have now lost touch with the reality of the Labour party;

Voters are used to a lifetime of two party politics and want both the two main parties to provide the option of a realistic government that can win an election by evolving with the times, listening and responding to the majority of voters' beliefs and needs. And there's a lot of tribal history and expectation of what and whom Labour used to stand for and represent.

However the Labour party seem intent now on being a party dedicated to that very specific argument and point of view, with their interest on furthering this rather than engaging with voters and the country, and being an option for a realistic government. Which is fine, but it comes with accepting this won't appeal to many voters who don't share those very specific views and interests, and that Labour isn't likely to win an election. And it leaves voters in limbo with no meaningful opposition.

The time is very ripe for a new centre left party that has its feet on the ground.

Has anyone else read The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart? I highly recommend it.

A contempt for psephology is all too common on the ideological Left. They want to 'win the argument' to their satisfaction, not the election.

I really liked that episode. He knows his shit.

He really does. I follow him on Twitter and he posted a couple of days ago about doing a seminar for politics students. A political ‘activist’ (don’t know whether they are an academic or journalist) replied with ‘no one is interested in what you have to say’ or something similar.

It sums up the problem nicely.

Graduate/Non-Graduate is the new political fault line, and a Labour Party increasingly colonised by middle-class graduates is going to find it ever more difficult to communicate with non-graduates.

The message last time round was full of notions of countering the false consciousness of the oppressed peasants who were wrong to blame migrants for the queues at the doctors, wrong to support Brexit, wrong to want to lock more people up for longer, etc.

I really liked that episode. He knows his shit.

nauticant yes, that was the one. He also did a really fantastic interview with Santander during the election campaign, discussing the collapse in ‘party loyalty’ across Europe over recent decades.

I was watching an interview with Matthew Goodwin following the election and he was talking about how it is far easier for the tories to move ‘left’ on economic policy than it is for the Labour to move to a more socially conservative position and how difficult this is going to be for them.

I'd recommend that anyone interested watch this:

It's an hour of "Wow!" But if you've not got time, the first 10 minutes or so are hugely informative.

The Labour Party have allowed the Conservative Party to be seen as the 'everyman/everywoman' party with this kind of idiocy.

Yes, this appears to be the case.

I was watching an interview with Matthew Goodwin following the election and he was talking about how it is far easier for the tories to move ‘left’ on economic policy than it is for the Labour to move to a more socially conservative position and how difficult this is going to be for them. He said that a Conservative voter in Surrey has a lot more in common with a new Conservative voter in Stockton in terms of social attitudes than a Labour voter in Hartlepool has with a Labour voter in Cambridge. Finding policy positions that appeal to both is going to be a massive challenge for Labour.

Paul Embery talks a hell of a lot of sense, and I agree with him on so many things. I can’t see his views being remotely popular with the current Labour activists.

I'm not 100% sure it's the same Diane Jones but it fits just so.

These days I've picked up an almost unconscious habit that when I find a TRA name that's new to me I'll google, and I'm no longer surprised how often and how instantly I find the person on the Internet. For TRAs with a public profile the pool is very small.

How do you tell the difference between a trans woman and a cross dresser and how dangerous they might be?
soapboxie.com/government/Joseph-Pikul-Diane

Thanks for that link nauticant. I didn't realise Diane Jones was the mother of the child featured in that programme, which I remember seeing. Diane Jones is clearly a Susie Green type 'true believer', for much the same reasons as Green.

Knowing who she is makes the responses by the panel much more understandable, as well as the audience response to DD. It's so much harder to speak up against an ideology which has had such a profound effect on children without it looking as though it is the children who you are attacking.

I heard it at the time and ifrc the questioner was a transwoman, which I guess must make it much harder to say to their face that TWArent W, even if they believe it, and could also explain the audience’s muted response to DD