Julia Hartley-Brewer lobs gender kryptonite at Labour justice minister

JH-B mentioned that the Labour press office did not like her asking these questions, but she had to.

Even though I am properly GC I would be terrified at the prospect of being interviewed by JH-B on anything. She is quick. I wonder if the press office will retaliate. Soft interviews only?

I liked the way she interrupted to shout “HE! HE! HE!” when Ellie dutifully described the rapist as ‘she’. Thank goodness.

The moment I heard the pledge to reduce violence against women I thought "How does that work with sticking violent men in with incarcerated women?" So it's rubbish again.

I'm sure I saw somewhere that the Monster Raving Loony Party is pledged to take a GC position in support of women's rights. If it's in their manifesto and they field a candidate where I live I will probably vote for them. I can't vote Labour when they talk down to and/or ignore GC women when they raise worries about safeguarding and single sex spaces and then, hypocritically, pretend to be worried about VAWG.
In fact I was so shocked and distressed to hear Keir Starmer say ... it should never be said that only women have a cervix ....that I would struggle to vote for a party with him in it. The same goes for Liza Nandy-prisons, David Lammy - dinosaurs, the male Labour MP's who tried to shout down Rosie Duffield. Plus Emily Thornberry and Stella Creasey for various sneering remarks directed at women.

i haven’t heard the plans that Labour have but they’ll need more police, more law courts, proper sentencing (ie prison places). How is that being funded.

@Sidaway I think in the last couple of elections I've always managed to find an independent who was focused on local issues to vote for.

I like the look of the policies of the SDP (https://sdp.org.uk/policies/) but I'm in one of the safest Tory seats in the country so I doubt they'll have a candidate in my area.

I did pull out the email I sent my MP in 2018 about self-ID though - he wrote back to me at the time basically straight out of the Maria Miller/Penny Mordaunt school of "be kind". I have forwarded it to him again, asking whether in light of the last 5 years his views had changed at all.

Absolutely.

I’ll have to watch later but sounds good

It's the polite way to ask someone to stop shoving your head down the toilet and flushing it.

well, if there is any benefit to any menopause policy, you can bet your bloody life that the TW will be claiming it too

Think we owe it to the memory of the Suffragettes to at least vote for someone, even if it's the Monster Raving Loony Party...

OMG I haven't seen JHB in action before - I think I may have a girl-crush on her!

@Laladybird yes that is what they are doing. Which is why every single Labour MP needs to be asked the question "what is a woman?" ahead of every interview in which they have the gall to talk about women at all.

Labour is unelectable

Is the Labour Party concerned that they might be alienating half the electorate?

As pps have said Scottish Labour whipped their MSPs to vote for self ID. A few women refused, including Johann Lamont MSP who has worked hard to protect women's rights in Scotland, against the Trans rights juggernaut.

Sorry to be cynical but this commitment to halve violence against women and girls comes across like Labour is trying to appeal to women voters and redirect attention away from the What is a Woman question.

They think we won't notice.
They think we will be distracted by promises on "single sex spaces" rather than single sex exceptions in the Equality Act.
They think we don't know about the Haldane judgment which says legal sex and biological sex are the same thing.
They think we haven't realised there is de facto self ID here in the UK.

The "she" also tells us that Labour will have no problem with Adam Graham being granted a GRC upon release from prison so that he can demand entry to women's spaces and conceal his criminal history.

Surely if you wanted to reduce VAWG you would target the low hanging fruit first and not create or maintain loopholes which allow convicted sex offenders in women's spaces.

@SmartHome - your post struck such a chord with me. I was saying exactly the same thing to my daughter this morning - that for the first time ever I'm probably not going to vote in the next election. It makes me so sad, as voting is such a privilege, denied to so many people (especially women) across the world.

Hear, hear 👏👏

I appreciate Julia holding Ellie accountable for saying that Labour didn't/doesn't support the Scottish GRR. They whipped their MSPs, for godsake! Anas Sarwar has been far more of a cheerleader for it than Sturgeon, or any of the SNP Leadership candidates who are at least canny enough to partially distance themselves. And unlike at WM where Labour is the actual Opposition and defying the whip usually "just" means being removed from the (shadow) Front Bench, in Scotland it apparently means either being barred from reselection or being thrown out of the party Andy Wightman/Greens-style. This needs scrutiny.

I don't think any "floating voters" in Scotland, even likely Labour voters, have much patience with Labour's faux-clueless "I don't know what they're doing up there!" (to quote Jess Phillips in the last Lab Leadership contest). If Ellie doesn't know what's going on in her party in Scotland, she should either find out before going on television or admit she doesn't know and make a note to find out rather than blethering. You want to talk about Scotland, don't tell lies about Scotland. You want votes in Scotland, don't act like you can't be bothered to keep up with what's happening here, in your own party, on a very basic level.

I disagree with JHB on many things but I'm very glad she's on our side and I love that she 'owns her show' and lays down the house rules for the gender nutters.

I think I'll scream if I hear one more Labour politician say we need to take the heat out of this debate.

Please fuck off and stop gaslighting women.

I do think that every politician needs to be held to account on this issue. They are after all asking to represent women in a position of power and should be able to articulate their response to a question as important as what a woman is. The problem I see is the mass gaslighting of young women which means they won't own the issue for themselves. Therefore journalists, MPs, commentators and MSM need to be having the discussion. What is a woman - you cannot use a circular argument to answer that question and be taken seriously. The youth who stake a claim to any authenticity or coherence or intelligence will see then the argument for what it is. Currently the opposition is led by the nose by emotional 20 something babies.

It would be so easy to 'take the heat out' wouldn't it.

They could stop lying that men can be women.

They could stop putting men first.

They could say that they believe that women's rights matter.

'Take the heat out', you know, like how male labour mps do when their own female party members speak on the matter and fall short of the gender faithful? Impassioned, I think they call it? Admittedly impassioned is an odd word to denote cowardly but the clock strikes thirteen.

Yes, they say this, then never follow it up. I'm waiting for an interviewer to say, '....well? Go on then.' It's meant to make them sound calm and rational (unlike us hysterical wims), but it should be the start of a statement, not the end.