New PM

Same, that's why if I was judging Priti Patel on abortion alone, I would be okay with her I think, I am assuming she has reservations about abortions and that's why she has chosen to abstain each time. I can cope with that.

Will do thanks

@Covidagainandagain

We’d choose well, I think!

I don’t think I can support a pro-life candidate. I could support someone with private qualms or issues of conscience, as long as they were happy with the consensus we have about abortion at the moment.

That makes sense. From my perspective I have some concerns about some of the people being proposed as the new Prime Minister based on their voting records on topics to do with abortion. That said I guess it doesn't all depend on one persons opinion at the end of the day.

I'm good with Sunak, Truss and Zahawi on abortion rights, undecided on Tugendhand and Gove.

Priti Patel has abstained from every vote on abortion rights but I also have concerns because she is Priti Patel!

Raab, Bravermaman and Javid have voted pro life a few too many times for my liking, but not always.

Wallace, Hunt and Baker are pretty much pro life all the way, particularly Baker who has never voted pro choice once.

But that still leaves a range of people who are pro choice and understand the concept of a woman. If only one of us actually got to make the choice for prime minister!

@RogersOrganismicProcess

Start with her last appearance in front of Caroline Noakes at the WESC.

From the clip, above, Suella would get my vote, as would Javid. I’d need to learn more about Kemi. As it stands I know nothing about her.

Tom Tugendhat made mincemeat of Boris when he was chair of the foreign affairs committee.
He's a fresh start with no associated contamination.
Super intelligent and forensic- just need to know if he's GC...

Same. My only worry is her not having enough experience to win it. She’s smart, has integrity and has worked in the Treasury and Levelling Up. Good candidate.

Agree. I think she should run. Would love to see her do that. If she gets the support I would have confidence in her ability.

It can’t hurt. Cameron was younger and I don’t think much more experienced.

The Telegraph are reporting that Kemi Badenoch is 'taking soundings' on whether to run for Leader. twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1545104532874711041

I'd like to see her do it, but I'm not sure this is the right time for her. Maybe too early in her ministerial career/experience and not a high enough profile outside the party?

@DeadbeatYoda

It couldn’t be more relevant. This is what I am trying to tell you. The way you feel when I say “politician who is right about everything but supports one bizarre thing you can’t support, eg they are strongly pro life” is the way I feel when you put someone in front of me who is right about everything but supports sterilising gender distressed kids.

Transgender ideology isn’t left-wing. It combines the authoritarian instincts of fascism with the far extremes of liberalism. It’s a red line for me.

I didn't say anything of the sort. That's a straw man that you have created to try am demean my point of view. The examples you gave have no connection to any party that I have ever voted for.

@Covidagainandagain

No, it’s a valid point you are making. Some choices are shitty. I’m asking @DeadbeatYoda because I’m trying to aid them in understanding that I see the ‘progressive’ stance on transgenderism as they might see it if an otherwise excellent politician suddenly swung aggressively behind a pro-life position. That’s how I felt when I realised Lisa Nandy thought women should be locked up with male rapists. The political earth shifted under me. It was horrible.

‘But some people who are willing to say 'women are women' are also people who want to be able to classify them so that they have the right to determine what happens with their bodies etc.’

Political choices are rarely this black and white (we’re lucky in this country to have reasonably moderate people on the right of politics). But you’re right. There are people who will agree with me that female people exist, and are separate from males, and then try to control their bodies. I want this issue dealt with before our politics becomes this polarised. If it does, and I have to choose directly between a young woman’s right to choose not to give birth and a young woman’s right to say things that are true, it will be a terrible day and I don’t know what I’ll do.

Ignore my last comment, apparently we have the same view, just coming at it from slightly different directions

But some people who are willing to say 'women are women' are also people who want to be able to classify them so that they have the right to determine what happens with their bodies etc.

Given whats just happened in america I am at least as interested in any politicians stance on abortion rights as I am on anything else. I have zero interest in someone calling me a woman on the sole basis of being able to dictate my right to an abortion as a woman.

@DeadbeatYoda

You’d vote for someone who wanted to remove women’s right to an abortion?

@achillestoes as opposed to voting for the lying scumbag who will say anything to get your vote but is brazen in their abandonment of any previously professed ethic or concern if it means keeping their snout in the trough?
Would I vote for an entity that stood for everything that I see as damaging to my country and its future, to social cohesion, to all that I hold dear just because they agreed with me on one issue? No I wouldn't.
Would I vote for an entity that I truly believed would be best for education. Public health, my Childrens' future but who didn't support one other stances take? Yes. Any truly progressive party is wildly unlikely to espouse views abhorrent to me and if they did I would fight for change from the inside - not vote for someone who is going to drive the country down the toilet.

And as someone on Twitter just pointed out, the trans issue is a litmus test for how the candidate is going to treat women, and how they are going to navigate the politics of post-modernity. It’s not just whether I have to call male people ‘she’ - it’s how they respond to truth and lies. That is pivotal.

But also, I should say this isn’t a single issue decision for me. If I only cared about this issue I’d support Farage or Lawrence Fox, and I don’t. I have other red lines. But this is the determining issue, if all other things are somewhere in the realms of normal politics (so you won’t catch me voting for any obvious racists, homophobes, people who want to mince the poor for fertiliser etc).

Admittedly.,

adnottedly I haven’t heard many calls for a GE, the opposite really

but I assume Labour are keen, they will just have to wait though

Maybe it is individualism as in pp or maybe it is Labour being for unions who are heavily white and male - I think they only just had a female leader?

But lots of unions have had female leaders so there must be more to it than that.

And I know we don’t elect PMs, but many of the same people who were saying that about BJ 24 hours ago are now saying we need a general election or the Tories have no mandate. Rhetoric shifts opinion.