Adult son's voting intentions-a little shocked.

This was really one of those occasions, given your audience, where you needed to channel your inner Bruce Willis.
"So? So we're 51% of the population dip-shits. And we've at least a 100 years experience of dealing with misogynistic little weasels like you and your friends in frocks. So?...so... bring.. it... on. Yippee-ki-yay motherfuckers!" 😆

The antisemitism comparison comes from Nancy Kelly. I do wonder whether such views are off-the-shelf memes rather than arrived at via independent thought. Perhaps it would be worth getting him to unpack Kelly's comparison, and explore why it caused such outrage? (It's no less outrageous when repeated by someone we know).

I attended a local election count as an observer in the north east in the early '90s and there was one ward where the Labour candidate was the only one standing - no Tory, no independents. I had no idea such a thing occurred in a democracy.

Indeed. I have spoken to mine 1:1 and while I would say he was listening, because we've known each other for a very long time, he still had all the clichés.

There's no use Labour trying to blame their own barmpot ideas on the Government.

Yes, but this is hardly news. Loads of women on here so disgusted with their Labour MPs that they won't vote for them again.

The problem may be more acute in Canterbury, but it is a national problem for Labour. We've all seen how cowardly tentative Starmer is , still saying TWAW with his '99.9% of women don't have penises'. He's terrified of his TRAs, who are too deep into the ideology to see that if they turn away from Labour, it only serves the interests of the Conservative Party - who are increasingly saying TWAM. Their punishing of Labour for being less than gung-ho only passes victory to the party they say they want out of power.

OP's son is like a case-study for this problem. A "vociferous left winger" who nonetheless facilitates a right-wing victory unless the left-wing Labour Party tugs their collective forelock on the transagenda. Completely focussed on one issue, willing to throw everything else Labour would do away unless they do this.

Nationally, they'd rather have a government that they're 100% against (or say they're against) than one that they'd be 95% for. They'd rather be able to wail about the evil government, than compromise 5% and work to get Labour to give them that other 5%, or work towards this themselves. I'm starting to think these supposed left-wingers are nothing of the sort. They just like squealing from the sidelines about how unfair it all is. They value their (manufactured) victimhood above a left-wing government they claim to want.

Give it a bleeding rest.

He's his own person. I don't agree with my adult son on politics, but his voting choices are his, not mine.
Being shaken is a bit OTT, he's not you.

Can someone please tell me how to open the programming interface on a child? I will take it as a win if my kid leaves home honest and polite. Anything else will be a bonus.

But what the OP is describing is a Canterbury problem. TRA Labour types won't vote for Rosie Duffield. In Canterbury.

That in itself is hardly going to swing the outcome of a General Election.

It's far more likely that many women throughout the UK, and many men, who may have voted Labour will now not because Labour have gone completely barmpot on the TWAW, rapists in prisons, etc.

Now that may well affect the outcome of a GE. Might not; but it could do.

fdgdfgdfgdfg · Today 17:30
I really love the way people are piling on the OP here.

Imagine the pile on if a poster said their son was voting Tory.

So the independent candidate in your constituency won't get in, it will be a Tory seat. His vote makes no difference.

And by withholding his 'left-wing' vote from his own constituency, he increases the possibility of Canterbury becoming Tory again, as it was from 1918 to 2017 (when Duffield won it for Labour). As you said in your OP, "he'd rather the Tory candidate won than Duffield".

I think you have to reassess whether your son actually is "a very political person and a vociferous left winger". He may well identify as a left-winger, but his actions are speaking louder than his words. His actions enhance the chances of another Tory government after the coming General Election.

He could as well spoil his ballot paper in his own constituency with "TWAW" for all the effect his vote will have.

In my case possibly related to my own innate tendency to Eeyoreness!

The polls look good for Labour now but I remember Neil Kinnock losing to John Major when everyone thought the Conservatives had run out of steam and couldn't possibly win after so many years in power.

Also because Labour would need a massive swing and the FPTP system is inherently biased to the Tories because Labour's vote is so concentrated in metropolitan areas.

Plus the government is successfully stoking culture wars and pandering to the xenophobic vote with their immigrant policies.

Plus what CurlewKate said about young people and trans ideology.

Plus the disenfranchisement of younger, more left-leaning voters with the new voter ID law.

Plus the entrenched disengagement of so many people who fail to vote because "they're all the same" and "they don't care about us" which is only getting worse with the Tories' continued debasement of politics.

Plus so many people saying they don't know what Keir Starmer stands for.

Plus the mainstream media being overwhelmingly pro-Conservative and actively obscuring and distorting Labour's message.

Plus 'the Left' being so stupidly, self-inflicted-woundingly factional.

Plus the fact that in the last century two thirds of the time we had a Conservative government compared to one third for Labour and I don't see any real large scale shift to more socialist principles amongst the public, despite powerful incentives to rethink.

I desperately hope I am wrong but am getting less and less convinced that Labour will triumph.

I really love the way people are piling on the OP here. She's probably the one gender critical voice that her son is hearing, but apparently it's her fault that her son believes TWAW. It's not more likely to have been the media, our politicians, his teachers, his friends, celebrities etc.

Yes, maybe she could have gone a bit harder, but that runs the risk of her son thinking she's a complete bigot and completely disengaging on the subject. At least at the moment they can have a conversation about it.

No they don't. It's a metaphor.

But the position of the Canterbury Conservative Party - who would select and probably produce the next Tory MP if one were to beat Rosie Duffield - is that TW Are Men.

An excellent Independent may well think the same.

It's just an expression, meaning that the support for one particular party in that constituency is overwhelming. An exaggeration of 'weighed in favour of', if you will.

I'm getting confused now.

Are we talking about the upcoming local elections or a General Election?

If the local elections, he wouldn't be voting for Rosie Duffield but for Labour councillors, so no reason to not be registered in the constituency he lives in and vote Labour.

If the General Election, it doesn't matter if he votes for an "excellent independent candidate in my constituency", you've said the Tory will be a shoo-in. So the Tory will win in your constituency, and Labour will be one vote down in his constituency.

I'm confused as to what your son's thinking is on professing to be left-wing.

But that's not why he is voting right is it?

You've brought up a young man who, despite saying he's of the left, will vote right rather than vote for a woman upholding women's rights. How anti-women is that? But many on this board think on the issue on which Rosie Duffield is not supported by her leadership at a party level the right are speaking much more clearly in favour of the right to privacy and dignity.