If Starmer stated what a woman is...

He does not care about winning any elections. His job is to keep a left leader out, nothing more nothing less.
Winning an election would be a side hussle at best.

@Artichokeleaves

Mine too.

They don’t accept the law, they don’t accept the democratic method as a basis for making law. Their own morality trumps everything else.

@Artichokeleaves

you have summed up my thoughts precisely.

It is also beyond naive to not realise this is not a bug of leftist politics right now. it is the main feature.

High on ideology and talking to the pixies with a deep belief of moral superiority and entitlement. Go and look up Mandelson's 'post democratic era' beliefs. He wasn't kidding. They really do believe it. They don't believe in democracy or representation, they believe in Doing To the masses as their high faluting ideology and total lack of any real life experience dictates.

They are fucking scary people.

There is at this point nothing whatsoever that Starmer, or the Labour, Libdem or Green parties could say that I would trust in or believe.

If they have finally seen the light on women and homosexuals and children re safeguarding needing equality of rights and access too to TQ+ people? Well I don't want in power those who were so easily duped into obviously untenable and inhumane positions by a political lobby for so long, and said such appalling things to so many people, and supported trying to force it through law.

If they are merely making nice noises temporarily to make women think they can be trusted in order to get voted into power to then stab women, homosexuals and children in the back by galloping through the promises made to the political lobby they're the hostage of?

Frankly that's even scarier.

Until a new sane centre left socialist party rises from the ashes of this utter mess, the left remains interested in alternative facts a la Trump and being the party of naive children with insufficient life experience to realise they are being manipulated.

I'll take corrupt buffoons over that any day. I'd rather try and fix poverty and people's heating/food bill problems from the inside as a long term aim than try to get laws rolled back that removed people's rights, equality and access and subordinated women to men.

It’s a struggle to understand how anyone believes it, but they do.

They have been convinced that it's the correct, progressive thing to believe, so it must be true. Therefore there must be some subtle, complicated meaning of "woman" that makes it true.

They don't know what that meaning might be but won't admit it because that would make them look stupid.

I'll probably give my postal vote to my dc and let them close their preferred candidate. Its their future after all

i told dd at the last election that I’d vote for whatever she chose (and ds1 in the brexit referendum)

Hasn't he made his opinion on this clear enough? Whether or not he believes it is not the point, who knows, but jumping on the woke bandwagon along with his colleagues isn't going to win back Labour voters. He comes across as pathetic and weak (and two-faced after the recent partygate stuff).

Possibly, if he clearly said that women’s spaces should be protected, that we should have single sex prisons, fairness in sport etc. Then definitely without a doubt I’d come running back to Labour.

Labour voter all my life
I'm now 50
Labour have made it very clear what they think of me (that is, an adult human female. It is now forbidden to even use the word "woman" it seems..)
I'll never vote for them again until they regain some sanity on this issue. Never.
Will never vote tory, lib dems and greens are just as bad (worse??) than Labour on this issue, so I'm politically homeless.
I'll probably give my postal vote to my dc and let them close their preferred candidate. Its their future after all.

It’s a struggle to understand how anyone believes it, but they do.

Yes, I'm sure there are some who have performed the mental gymnastics necessary to bend their mind in that way, but I still think the proportion of people who say TWAW and really, truly, literally believe it is very small.

Was just going to post the same thing for @LadyWithLapdog

So wrong to say only women can have a cervix...

Nobody would get to vote for him if he said that cos his own party would knobble him if he did. He’s far from stupid. He certainly knows what a woman is. I’ve seen nothing in his face or body language that suggests he’s enjoying any part of the pantomime required of him.

He also knows that if he acknowledges reality the same vindictive, full throttle attacks and smears we’ve seen aimed at others would come straight for him, aided and abetted by anybody and everybody who would prefer another leader. He could have zero skeletons in his closet but some bugger would dig up a minuscule ear bone from somewhere and wave it about as evidence all the other bones had existed, but they’d been fed to staving dogs. Militant 2.0 would make The Thing We All Now Care About Most on twitter and he’d be toast.

Yup.

@Floisme

It’s hard when you have to face that your natural representatives are laughing in your face when you ask for the bare minimum of respect.

Its more than that. He doesn't think that women have the right to link their biology with being a women, and exclude male biology.

They’re nowhere near committing to those things.
I know. It's pathetic how little I'm asking from them but they can't even do that.

@Floisme

They’re nowhere near committing to those things.

...and also, that this is a topic with a lit if self-censorship

It will depend on what the next Labour Party manifesto says about single sex spaces and the GRA.

If they commit unambiguously to upholding the right to single sex (not gender) spaces, and to not messing any further with the GRA, then as things stand at the moment, I'll vote for them.

I know other posters expect more from them and they're probably right because this is an embarrassingly modest ask - basically just a promise to uphold current legislation.

Kier said that "only women have cervixes" is "something that shouldn't be said"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58698406

so that's clear as to his views. Women includes females and males

Penny Mordaunt has just said she knows what a woman is. Unfortunately that doesn't mean she has promised to protect single sex spaces or stop self-ID. So it would take more than acknowledging that a woman is an adult human female for me to trust Keir Starmer on this vital issue. I would need to see him apologise to Rosie Duffield and also Joan Smith, as well as committing to uphold women's single sex spaces and stop self ID.

@OldCrone

I think they believe those people have ‘always been’ women. I think they believe being a woman is defined by something other than biology, and that (somewhere?) in every person there is a bio-psychological ‘identity’ that determines whether they are a man or a woman.

I know.

The problem with that is that the GRA has caveats, and he know that but chooses to assuage the loudest voices and make himself look daft! Not sure why. It puzzles me. But then again, I am a sensible, logical person.

To answer the question

ive never voted labour, live in a very safe tory seat so labour wont get in anyway

i think theyve not been a good opposition and that may partly be down to covid and the Ukraine but it doesn’t inspire me to vote for them

i won’t be voting tory either