Starmer in favour of clarifying Equalities Act

As PP have already noted, as soon as Reed added the qualifier (“it must mean biological women primarily”) he demonstrated his bad faith.

The rest of his quote suggests that Labour’s leadership only think refuges (and possibly prisons) are ‘worth’ segregating.

Hospital wards, changing rooms, the Hampstead ponds, single sex toilets etc are all still to be an open season.

I suspect it is a way of potentially making provison for single sex refuges and prisons - whilst also declaring there is nothing to fear from males in other types of single sex provision. A fudge.

Is Labour’s current use of ‘safe spaces’ (a) a misunderstanding of correct terminology or is it (b) linguistic sleight of hand to sound like they support women always having single-sex spaces when they actually don’t support this?

(b)

Next?

He doesn't uniequivocally support it, though. There are always qualifiers; and even Steve Reed is now using them.

it is simply an electoral ploy because the doy know it is an issue, but at the same time they have made pledges in favour of Self ID. Still a no, from me.

Nice catch. I hadn't noticed that. Wonder who else they want to include 🤔

If Labour support the clarification of the Act then that's the Labour position.
If Keir personally doesn't agree with it but supports it for electoral reasons then...that means the Labour Party is going to stick with it for those reasons. So what does it matter whether he personally agrees with it or not?

Literally the Labour position is becoming more GC by the minute (which is a GOOD THING) and most of the posts I see are just variations on "BUT DOES KEIR REALLY BELIEVE THIS IN THE DEPTHS OF HIS SOUL".

Did all this demand to look inside politicians' souls start with the Tim Farron stuff about whether homosexuality was a sin?

That is discrimination against those who are limited in certain areas, I can think in particular of the projected characteristics of those not born here and having learned English from the cradle (not taking about everyone as some immigrants have better English than myself) so race, those young and old so age and those with disabilities, so Keir is a sexist, racists, abilest agest, the most vulnerable groups who are hamed most by this particular ideology, what a sadistic evil man he is.

If he stays quiet the Tories should be able to make progress on this and on their intervention on the Scottish gender law. The further they get without Labour objection the more difficult it will be for Labour to then unravel. (As in why did you not object when you could.)

It will be a bonus for the Tories if their progress creates divisions/tensions within Labour. That's politics. But also useful if Labour politicians are forced to choose between activist and public support.

That’s a weird headline, as what it means is banning people from opposite sex facilities in some cases, surely? Not from same-sex ones?

Me too. He’s incapable of speaking plain, unequivocal English because he needs to please those who fund the party and back the Labour Party.; he needs all the support he can get regardless of anything or anyone including women.

I have no faith or confidence in Starmer. As another poster pointed out, he allows Rosie Duffield to be bullied for speaking simple truths and has never once defended her. He can fuck off.

Not to the point of saying anything then overriding it after.

If he does that women are fucked quite frankly. Not language I usually use but anything that takes us towards an NZ style gender ideology dominating is very concerning.

I agree a vote will force it out it into the open a bit more though.

Wouldn't it be great if it was clarified re biological sex.

Then and only then will we start to get accurate statistics proving TP are indeed the most marginalised group in society, instead of grey, woolly areas where sex and gender are interchangeable. Surely they would welcome this?

To be honest, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a Labour leader who actually wants to win an election. I found a lot of Labour activists were quite comfortable in opposition where they could make noise without having to compromise. How high up the chain that attitude goes I don't know but my guess is that it's shared by a number of MPs and even shadow ministers. Which, to get to my point, is why I've come round to thinking that Starmer will be dreading this going to a parliamentary vote as it would demonstrate to the whole electorate that he is not in control of his party.

The left made a useful idiot and fool.out of me.

I can now see that Keir is a male supremacist as are the left, they have never had a woman leader, and note Harriet Harman and Angela Rayners have links to men who want to cause harm.

All politicians are sadistic, the left are not as honest as the right about this, hence the left would defend those murdering children because they are Christian and support those who harm 9 year old. I saw this pattern with grooming gangs in the left too, if it's 🌈 or Muslims they always pick the sadistic side and defend those hurting children with some kind of spin.

The left are also miserable, they pretend that they are full of fun and look deep and behind the curtains it's all seedy pretend, they are miserable and fake as anything in my experience, full of high heights and deep lows.

Yep he’s not to be trusted. Labour have been out of power for so long he’ll say anything at this point.

Pleeeese can we see Thornberry and Nandy discussing this

I want Labour to demonstrate that they understand the problem, not passively go along with a word change in the hope that the topic is dropped.

At the moment, Starmer appears to think the public isn't progressive enough, and in time will be ready to acccept that sex is irrelevant and gender is important. Hes waiting for the plebs to catch up.

He’ll have to decide

He can’t do 99.9% aren’t talking about it

Being bland won’t help him avoid making a decision

As long as the "primarily" is there it's useless.

I want a manifesto commitment to sex means biological sex in the Equality Act, a commitment to stop anyone telling children they are born in the wrong body and a commitment to stop affirmation in schools. Also parents must have a right to see what sex education children are getting at school.

If Labour abstain on changes to the Equality Act that wont be good enough and I want to see them push for action on this before the election.

Redefining SSE as safe spaces, and introducing a category of biological woman is a risky strategy long term, because there's a good chance they'll be in government soon.

Then they'll have to fight women when we notice that SSE have disappeared, and they've renamed women as 'biological women' and continue to see us as a subset of women. Istead of calling us 'cis', they are calling us 'biological', and presumably think we should be in a class along with nonbiological women when we don't need safe spaces.

They arent solving the problem, just renaning us and kicking the problem down the road for a bit.

Come on Kier, FFS you can do this..
With the cost of living and housing so high, economic prospects and social mobility so low, children and disabled people living in poverty and the NHS, schools and public services starved of funds by the Tories until they are on their absolute knees, I really really want to give Labour my vote with a clear conscience.

I don’t care about politicians’ apologies either at this point, all the main political parties are wildly misogynistic, and the Tories were proposing legal self ID for the UK just a couple of years ago.

I just want Labour to say that they will protect single sex women’s spaces in a reformed equality act. I want all the parties to commit to that as the basic fucking minimum for deserving any woman’s vote in 2024.

If it is done by the Tories before the election then much the better (that can be their apology for the harms caused to women on their watch) and that will hold all the other Westminster parties’ feet to the fire. Then we will need commitments by all of them to review the GRA as to what it’s even for, if it doesn’t change legal sex any more.

I meant clarification , though classification almost works.

To be honest, as a labour politician, saying only very ambiguous things but then quietly supporting sex to mean, well, sex, is probably the best way to get elected. And I do very much want the tories out. Bland and palatable to everyone is Starmers usp. Whether it’s possible to balance on the fence is a different matter, but I think he’s made clear that he won’t make clear which side he’s on. I think we can probably trust him to make every effort to stay on that fence. My prediction is that under labour we will see a ban on conversion therapy but also a classification that sex means biological sex (started under the tories but approved by labour). They’ll paint this as supporting both women’s and trans rights. I’m sure both sides will be angry he’s not clearly on their side, but most of them won’t be angry enough to change their votes.