Here you go Errol:
"Given recent events I have updated my post on the state of the LP leadership contest.
The absolute state of the Labour Party leadership contest in relation to women's rights! Shocking. Worse than that even.
Long Bailey and Thornberry have turned off women on Mumsnet, the place where the most earnest and woke politicians go to die. Long Bailey with her virtue signalling, thought terminating cliche "no debate" and her insistence that every question about women must be turned into an issue about transwomen lost her sympathy. Her response implies women are irritating and neurotic for raising concerns. "No debate" from an elected politician? Does she really think that is reassuring from someone who is elected to a place to debate? She said to a question I asked in Camarthen that she also supports single sex exemptions for women which was a clear commitment in the Labour Party manifesto after all, however the "no debate" two word slogan hardly reassures that she understands what the exemptions are for and how they might be applied in such an intolerant climate. "No debate" means no vote from me. Whilst I thought self ID alongside single sex exemptions might be a compromise I could live with during the General Election, it is not now. As someone said, it is speaking out of both sides of the mouth.
Thornberry is worse. She could have made a grab for women's votes by subtly signalling an understanding of our concerns and acknowledging a respectful debate needs to take place. Instead on Mumsnet she banged on about the awfulness of prison for transwomen. Now, I'm sure prison is awful for transwomen, but I assume they're there for a reason and that reason might make them very inappropriate for a move to the female prison estate. It's not an acceptable response to say they must be in women's prison, which are full of very vulnerable women, and are awful places for women too, the vast majority of whom should not be there and are suffering after effects of PTSD. Turning questions about women's rights into a discussion about transwomen (and interestingly it is transwomen not transmen that seems to be the concern of most of the leadership comrades) is a speciality of the Labour front bench. It's almost as if they've lost sight of women entirely turning every question about us into a discussion about the rights of another group.
Starmer is sitting on the fence to such an extent that he will get splinters in his arse. So many women I know will vote for him because he hasn't said the catechism "transwomen are women". The bar is set very bloody low. This is positively fabulous after the shocking volt face of Clive Lewis, who having previously been clear he thought transwomen are male ( a biological fact after all), made a full apology and uttered the required mantra TWAW falling dutifully into line. This didn't help him though as I assume a lot of people spotted his cowardice and he hasn't made the ballot paper.
Nandy is proving that she is part of the metropolitan intelligentsia no matter her careful positioning trying to indicate working class sensibility on all other matters. Her total lack of concern that she might be alienating herself from her constituency also speaks to how she has paid no attention, none at all, to what is happening in the membership of the party and the thousands of women in the membership who do not agree with her. She believes TWAW, empatically, that we should not be ashamed to say it, that a 14 year old in her constituency has been waiting too long to transition (thus supporting the medicalising of children) and she equates this liberal, individualist movement with the movement for race equality in the 70's positioning all feminists raising concerns on the wrong side of history.
Raynor has promoted a horrible TRA on her timeline even during a period of complaints raised about their sexist, harassing behaviour. Her office staff member was on an aggressive, intimidating demonstration harassing our Woman's Place meeting in Brighton without any censure from her. She has now signed up to a slanderous pledge naming WPUK a hate group. Just in case you missed her good intentions her Twitter account is festooned in rainbows and cartoon unicorns. You see being a socialist is nolonger about being a fierce intellectual but about embracing an infantlilising ideology.
The shadow women and equality spokesperson Dawn Butler has already said she will not stand by the LP Manifesto to protect women's rights even during the GE campaign period. Her brand of politics is corporate self help and glittery awards sponsored by global capitalist giant Amazon.
Burgon gets support from women because his campaign manager is Laura Pidcock who knows exactly what we are going on about but in reality I doubt that he personally has paid much attention. He needs to start doing his homework rather than riding on Laura's coat tails. Only Laura has made it clear that the Labour Party should be tolerant of debate, recently coming in for extreme criticism for suggesting women should not be 'no platformed', an extremist tactic when applied to democratic discourse, that looks like blatant misogyny when used by the Party against women members. For sure the party is missing Laura's principled intelligence and feminist back bone in parliament and I hope she's back there soon. The loss of her seat is a tragedy on top of the awful defeat over which we must all properly consider the real significance. No sign of that amongst our leadership contenders.
Why does it matter? During this pantomime the Tory's have stood up in parliament and said the government will protect women's rights. The abysmal response from our leadership team? The sight of Dawn Butler vigorously shaking her head from side to side mouthing no. No? The LP don't want women's rights? It is not lost on our opponents that there's advantage to be had here. They of course will not support women's rights in entirety, they will refuse the necessary funding for one thing, but I think they understand better than we do that politics is about the war of position above all else.
Lord Ashcroft has recently reported on why Labour lost the election. It is an interesting read; "Partly because of this, some also felt the party had come to embody an excessively politically correct or “woke” culture, which would be intolerant of what they considered sensible, mainstream views: “They’re classing themselves as liberals but won’t let anyone else have a different viewpoint;” “You’re a bigot if you don’t agree there are 125 different genders;” “They can be woke, but they can also be vitriolic. I’ve heard them say things to Conservatives where I thought, ‘well, that wasn’t very nice’;” “The other day Jeremy Corbyn even did his pronouns! He said, ‘my name’s Jeremy Corbyn and my pronouns are ‘him’ and ‘his.’ You can Google it!” Quite!
The disdain of our politicians for women's concerns is emblematic of a lack of care or consideration for working class communities in general. It's almost as if women need to come along and say "Raise your game. Women are more than 50% of the population and we do not have to vote for any of you" as was just demonstrated. "
Ruth Serwotka