Penny Mordant's bid for leadership is surely over

Has this been posted yet? It's a jaw dropping article by Caroline Fiske for Conservatives for Women that outlines in detail how Mordaunt personally oversaw the dismantling of women's rights. There's massive detail including how the government's LGBT plan was used to promote gender identity in schools, how the SRE curriculum was infested with porn at the behest of dodgy groups, how the CPS toxic hate crime guidelines for schools (the ones that had to be withdrawn rather than subject them to any scrutiny) were promoted. All funded by the government:

www.conservativesforwomen.org/penny-mordaunt-helped-to-push-gender-ideology-out-across-every-institution-in-the-uk

That is why this topic needs to be brought up time and time again. Do these politicians - was it a man? - have any idea. Are they deluded or just ignorant? There are many many issues that needs to be returned to single sex but sport and toilets/changing rooms are definitely points that are now been highlighted to the general public.

@endofthelinefinally i’ll get popcorn….

There was a politician on LBC this morning earnestly defending Penny Mordaunt by explaining that what she actually meant was that ONLY men who have a medical diagnosis of GD and have had hormone treatment AND sex change SURGERY were the transwomen she was talking about when she said TWAW. I don't know who he was as I missed the beginning.
I have no doubt he has no idea what the backlash will be...

Exactly.

I'm just hoping there are now enough voices being heard saying "This is not about gay rights! This is not about being kind! This is about the biggest-ever demolition of women's rights and child safeguarding."

If that message can be repeated and repeated, there's a chance of the mainstream media actually doing their job and finding out the facts. And then countering the lies with facts.

The problem, in part, is that the press and MSM decided a long time ago that they were going to see TWAW. They call men 'she' at the man's request, have lots of articles from the TRA point of view, don't report about what is happening in prisons, hospital wards and schools. Theyre invested in this mindset, so as the leadership campaign is acted out in the media, they are going to carry on enforcing this view on the public.

BBC showing their allegiance

He sounds an idiot

It's so great that Mordaunt's flexible relationship with the truth is coming out so prominently in the news. Surely she can't be selected now. After Boris, the biggest requirement for the new leader is integrity.

I'm not convinced about Sunak's economic policy though, particularly holding off on tax cuts due to inflation.

There are 2 different types of inflation: supply-driven (cost of production going up) and demand-driven (people feeing rich, and buying more).

Our current inflation is supply-driven (the war in Ukraine reducing availability of various foods, sanctions in Russia reducing oil and gas, Brexit putting barriers in place for imports as well as exports).

Reducing tax makes the other type of inflation (demand-driven) worse because people feel richer and buy more unnecessary stuff. But it doesn't affect supply-driven inflation: it's just making it possible for people to keep buying goods they absolutely need (food and fuel).

Increasing wages could cause an inflation spiral, because once one sector has a big increase then all the others will have to follow, and the extra wage cost further increases the cost of production.

Reducing tax would mean less money coming into the coffers, which is a problem - since we need to pay back the huge cost of covid - but that's nothing to do with supply-driven inflation so shouldn't be artificially linked to it.

I can't work out whether Sunak doesn't really understand economics, or whether he's just over-simplifying the message because he doesn't think voters do (which is quite patronising). I think he might be trying a bit of a sleight-of-hand: blaming inflation for not cutting taxes, rather than all the money spent on covid policies..

I like Kemi's focus on supporting companies: creating more value is the only way out of this situation. But she wants to reduce tax by finding inefficiencies in the public sector, which I think is a non-starter. Everyone has been trying to do that already for years and schools and hospitals in particular already be cut to the bone, and only just keeping the lights on. I'm also very against her suggestion of 're-negotiating' net-zero by 2050. Climate change is urgent, and can no longer be pushed back.

Tom Tugendhat seems all talk and no ideas. He's too like Starmer.

So I think Truss is probably the best bet. She's experienced, not afraid to stand up to foreign powers, intends to cut taxes, plans to fund that by borrowing to cover the covid costs over a longer period of time, committed to net-zero by 2050, and didn't hesitate to stand up for women when that was a very unpopular move. It does worry me that she says covid is a 1 in 100 year event - I think that's optimistic, especially with climate change likely to bring many more equally expensive 1 in 100 year events over the next few years. But borrowing is probably still the right thing to do.

And that’s the thing isn’t it @bellinisurge the constant framing of the erasure of womens rights as “trivial”

I’d agree it was a side issue if it wasn’t impacting on women’s rights to free speech and safe spaces. I don’t actually care how people ‘identify’. Not sure how that’s a ‘side issue’ at the moment, though, as I would be likely to lose my job if I said these things in public.

Just listened to Sophie Raworth. Asked Penny why she lied about having no veto on Turkey joining the EU. 😮. She’s not one for backing down. She’s not coming across well at all. Won’t answer the question asked, evasive

Dickhead journo on BBC News just now saying the sex vs gender question is just a trivial carping but of nonsense.
Mate, you have no fucking idea

reframing the definition of woman to mean “adult human female & men who have ‘womanly feels’ but may not have them all the time or present in a female way don’t be such a bigot they’re still women” is not a side issue

it is utterly impossible to measure the impact of any policy on women of the adult human female variety only because of the definition being widened ti include men

if mordant doesn’t understand that she’s a bit thick. If she does understand that but doesn’t think that matters then she clearly doesn’t give a stuff about women. Neither is a great look

I think that there's a false assumption that the general public and Tory membership haven't a scooby about trans issues. It's impossible to have a situation where single sex spaces are being removed in places like M&S and pronouns are being introduced at work, yet 'normal' people don't notice. If us normies don't really care, why shut down anyone who speaks up?

Absolutely

let them take their own ‘culture war’ where I don’t have to see it and it has zero impact

Hey, I’m happy to move on and let it be a side issue. It’s the people who want to change law, policy and social mores to accommodate a chimera that are the problem here.
im happy to let those people bleat on Twitter for the rest of their lives while we ignore them

I think the "side issue" idea could have been one of those that comes from PR types. Along with "optics" and "control the narrative". (All terrible ways in which to approach talking to the public, as it's always so obviously constructed as to be controlled such that you can't have a say.)

I could well imagine that the idea was to get it out there, dismiss it, and then say "jeez just move on", with the intended effect being that you'd look far too PM-like to get bogged down etc.

Only it's backfired/is backfiring. Because that is a risky approach precisely because women care a lot about this, and if you don't understand that then you're playing with fire to dismiss it (as doing that looks like dismissing women), as we are perhaps now seeing.

She's on bbc with Sophie right now. She doesn't come across well and doesn't look comfortable with the policies she is projecting. Her body language says a lot. I don't think the Johnsonian approach will work somehow.

From the point of viewing of winning the leadership, I think she's right to call it a side issue.

I agree, but that's the same with almost all of the issues. I suspect that the main topics for most party members are fuel prices and if their grandchild can afford a house/the number of new houses in their area

I can't see any candidate dismissing climate change or the war in Ukraine as a side issue.

Tactically speaking, there is merit in the Trumpian/Johnsonian approach. She probably viewed "trans" as a side issue for the relevant constituencies and if people were banging on about the slightly obscure and complicated story of her handling of it in the past, she could keep denying and would be able to deploy against her opponents "you're a bit obsessed with this, aren't you?"

Incidentally, the BBC is already doing some helpful work in pushing the "you're a bit obsessed with this, aren't you?" line. It's a rare report indeed when a BBC accurately characterises the issue as being about integrity and nearly all I've heard have been talking about candidates rowing over "trans rights".

Nauticant. Absolutely.

Mourdant's choices were:

True believer: stick with what she'd said knowing it would go down badly with much of the membership who can't be shamed with "well, you're a bigot then".

Trumpian/Johnsonian: what happened then has shifted to an alternate reality and in this reality it never actually happened.

Apostate: I held those views, but since then I've reflected more, see that the situation is more complex, and so have changed my views to recognise conflicts in rights.

Self-interest ruled out the first and fear of the consequences of apostasy ruled out the last, even though it would be the truthful and most principled. Effectively this was a test of character and she failed it. Bodes badly for how she'd be as a PM.

I find Sunak better on the economic issues

Badenoch can be in his team I think they’d be good on same side

I find it tough when the media - and whoever pushed it -do stories like a spouse’s tax because I’d prefer people decide on policies first

We could be in a far worse position if inflation spirals and I include Labour in that for the next GE

Truss will hopefully be out.

I used to respect Rishi Sunak and hoped he would soon take over from Johnson. I changed my mind after the revelation of his and his wife's tax affairs. But Mordaunt is so much of a worse prospect, with her contempt for women, that I'm back to hoping Sunak makes it.

And from the Spectator we have this www.spectator.co.uk/article/penny-drops-kemi-soars-in-tory-activist-poll