How can we prevent the trans issue from being a gift to the right wing?

I don't think I've ever had call to use a third person pronoun when chatting to trans people.

Second person, yes; but third person, no.

What you describe seems to amount to pretending to a TW (and anyone else in the vicinity) that you believe he is an actual woman.

But how exactly does this performance amount to "treating someone as a woman"? How is it gender (or sex) specific?

Well for example, if I'm at a party and someone introduces me to "Jane", when clearly Jane was born male, I'm not going to start calling that person he/him and commenting on how they are upholding regressive stereotypes by wearing a dress. I'm going to say, nice to meet you Jane and make chit chat.

If at work a trans man joins my team, asks to be called Kyle and he/him, that's what I'm going to do.

It is absolutely no skin off my nose.

We will never know how things would have turned out with him as PM, so our opinions have little relevance to this discussion. But as a working class voter, his manifesto addressed the issues we face far more than anything I've seen from Starmer or Sunak (unless you believe the Tories when they tell you asylum seekers are the biggest threat to British society)

I canvassed for Labour in 2019. Spent a couple of weeks wandering the more deprived streets in this constituency in the rain and gloom trying to convince the normally died-in-the-wool Labour voters that Labour could deliver on the ever-changing daily menu of promises. People who had voted Labour all their lives were hearing today's special offer (today, madam, we can offer you a reduction in the voting age to 16) and laughing at us. People who've worked ruddy hard all their lives know about budgeting and knew when they were being sold a fantasy. They also thought giving 16-year-olds the vote was ridiculous. It was so patronising, knocking on doors and offering pie in the sky. We got our Labour MP back in but it was a close thing because Corbyn was so unpopular on the streets. Starmer seems to have learned from that and he and Rachel Reeves are already scaling back expectations.

I'm in the same situation. I won't vote for them at the moment because this is a key issue for me, but if they sort that out they'll have my vote.

He was absolutely signed up to Self ID, no doubt at all. Check all his Tweets on gendrr since he left office. And was proud to announce with Dianne Abbott a policy of total open borders.

In no way is that consistent with any reasonable traditional class or sex rights based analysis of society. It's Socialist Worker mangled with Judith Butler.

You are very entitled to your opinion, Corbyn was certainly a divisive leader.

We will never know how things would have turned out with him as PM, so our opinions have little relevance to this discussion. But as a working class voter, his manifesto addressed the issues we face far more than anything I've seen from Starmer or Sunak (unless you believe the Tories when they tell you asylum seekers are the biggest threat to British society)

Corbyn played the game as well. The Commons' most dedicated Brexiter, yet he betrayed the Leave vote to triangulate with Starmer.

Whatever you think of Starmer, he cut his teeth on the Second Vote gambit, and he's playing politics again, just this time with girls and women.

Now he's Parliament's most dedicated Brexiter. Go figure.

Corbyn was no friend of the working classes. His capitulation to Momentum student politics on identarian tropes of racialised and genderised politics, and total open borders migration policy made him absolutely unfit to run this country.

“It now seems that many prominent GCs have moved from a position of warning that the Labour position would alienate voters - which is fine - to using the issue to try and move people to support "anti-wokeism" generally and the Tory Party more specifically. Why would Keir Starmer make any further concessions to people who clearly are never going to vote Labour anyway?”

Revealing.

• Use of the dehumanising term “GCs”.
• Use of “prominent GCs” to create the impression there is some kind of leadership or co-ordinated campaign but without naming names, to avoid having to evidence the assertion / others challenging it by pointing out actual facts.
• Implied criticism of anyone using or who could be seen to be using this debate for political party purposes.
• Use of “concessions” - meaning that Starmer’s shiny new declarations of some small degree of support for women are nothing more than expediency, deployed solely to swing a few floating voters and in no way a principled or genuine commitment to women’s rights. In contrast, full approval of using this debate for political party purposes if it’s Starmer doing it.

Highly recommend listening to today’s episode of The Rest is Politics podcast. While it doesn’t cover this particular issue they do talk about Labour snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the Uxbridge by-election and that they ran a very weak campaign by letting the Tories set the agenda, making ULEZ such a key topic.

My point being that Labour are currently pretty bad at articulating their point and whatever their intentions actually are on the GRA, etc, they need to communicate effectively or the Tories will seize the reins and drive the agenda.

Why would Keir Starmer make any further concessions to people who clearly are never going to vote Labour anyway?

Because if he becomes PM he serves everyone, not just Labour voters. They're not concessions either, they're evidence of understanding different needs and allowing for that in policy.

Exactly this.

I'm a socialist - there's no other party that comes close to my own personal ideology than Labour. They are the natural choice for me and, other than some strategic anti-Tory votes based on where I lived at the time, they are the party I would always prefer to vote for.

But Starmer is doing a really good job of making me reconsider this position.

I would hardly say the right have given into the left. They know when to co-opt issues that will gain them working class votes - yes - but do any of their polices actually help women or the working class? It's all smoke and mirrors.

We don't have any parties that truly represent working class communities anymore. I have no idea what Starmer represents. He's trying to play whatever games will win the most votes and everyone can see through it.

At least with Corbyn, you knew exactly where he stood - even if you didn't agree. The only reason I will vote Labour is because my local MP is actually very decent. Otherwise I'm not sure what I would do.

@HPFA Why would Keir Starmer make any further concessions to people who clearly are never going to vote Labour anyway?

I've voted Labour all my life (other than when they bombed the shit out of the Iraqi people), have been a party member most of that time, and will vote Labour again if they pack in this regressive woman-hating ideology. Though I would also like to see them adopt some economic policies that aren't cloned from the Tories.

I know plenty of people who feel the same.

“Not subjecting to someone to discrimination because of their protected characteristic on gender reassignment” and “treating someone as if they are “socially” a member of the opposite sex” are two different and separate things.

Subjecting a male person to discrimination on the basis of the PC of gender reassignment would = chucking him out of the male-only Freemasons because of how he self describes.

Refusing membership of the Women’s Institute (in the days when it was single -sex female) to a man who likes making jam and baking cakes would NOT = discriminating against a person who “conforms to opposite sex stereotypes”.

However, now that the Women’s Institute has decided to become a mixed-sex feminine-gender organisation, refusing admission to a male who likes jam-making and cake-baking but who doesn’t assert a special identity whilst awarding membership to some males who conform to male-sex stereotypes (of expecting to be immediately awarded a top-of-the-hierarchy role) on the basis of their assertion of a special identity…does seem rather more discriminatory towards the ‘opposite sex stereotype’ cake-baker.

Imagine hypothetically that the Tories scrape through a win by the very seat of their pants at the next election. Can you imagine what would happen inside Labour HQ?
"How the fuck did we lose when we had such a lead over the Tories?"
"Well one unusual thing in the results shows that turnout among women was down an unusual amount. When we looked into it, the women turnout dropoff was down for us much more than the Tories. We asked around and found out it was the women's rights that put traditional Labour voting women off us and they stayed home in large numbers. That tipped the balance in a few key areas and that's where our big poll lead turned into scotch mist."
"Fuck."
"Yeah apparently women got the vote in 1928, and given they are over 50% of the population, you can't just ignore them and call them rights hoarding dinosaurs and still keep their vote."

This. But even if you remove the Labour bit. Some people go their whole lives believing that one party represents them. It doesn't matter what that party says or does, they always vote for that party no matter what. Some people are incredibly proud to have voted for the same party all their lives like it's some kind of achievement. I find this beyond stupid. I saw a you tube video a long time back that tried to highlight this to kids in a classroom.

Three kids from the class were made into the voters. One had a red flag, one had a blue flag, one had both a red and a blue flag. The kid with the red flag had to vote red no matter what, the one with the blue flag had to vote blue no matter what, the third kid who had both a red and a blue flag could chose how they voted.
Two other kids from the class were the candidates. For a number of voting rounds, each simulating an election, each candidate was given a small handfull of jellybeans. They could eat them, or give them to the voters to encourage the voters to vote for them. After each round of voting the winning candidate got a large handfull of jellybeans.
To start with both candidates would try and give all the voters an equal number of jellybeans to get votes. This went on for a few rounds until one of the candidates worked out the voter with the choice of red or blue flag determined the winner in every round. The kid with the red flag had to vote red, the kid with the blue flag had to vote blue. Why give them anything for their vote? The candidate who realised this just gave his entire jellybean budget to the one kid with both a red and blue flag, and won. It didn't take the other candidate long to see what was going on, they were losing everytime because they were still dishing out the jellybeans evenly every round. So both candidates got into a bidding war trying to buy the only vote that mattered. Only red and only blue kids got nothing.

If you vote the same way every time irrespective of how well or badly they do then why should they ever give you anything? They have your vote for free. Use your vote to get what you want, don't give it away for nothing. Only a fool does that.

A lot of policies that are considered Right today were Left back in the day.

It was the Labour Party and unions that were pivotal in keeping us out of the Common Market/EEC, only pivoting to being pro Europe in the late 80s.

The Left were historically way more stable borders than the Right were.

Both of these weren't for any principles necessarily, flows of low paid workers undermined British unions bargaining rights with employers all thru into the 70s/80s.

The trad Left would have had no truck with TRA rights, correctly seeing it as a confection, selfish "body politics", and a distraction from class based and sex based Left analysis of society.

Do you think Harold Wilson, Tony Benn, Dennis Healey, early Ken Livingstone, Bob Crow, Arthur Scargill etc would have had any time for Rick from Young Ones shouty student lefty politics in jettisoning girls and women?

Not for one instant.

The interesting change in politics since identarianism and intersectionalism mediated thru globalist capitalism took over from class/sex based politics about two to three decades ago, is that the Right have capitulated to the Left on social issues (Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak have made precise zero progess in deStonewalling our civic institutions, indeed allowing the activist Left to infect the civil service, QUANGOs, British Arts Council, NHS management, DfE etc), while the Left have capitulated to hyper globalisation and the boss class, and instead of looking to change the world, just content with the tearing down of UK PLC via decolonisation directives, and the racialisation and genderisation of public policy.

The Left have given into capitalism, and the Right have given into the Left.

And how does one do that - can you give any examples of how you treat TW as women when sex is irrelevant? Because I can't think of any so I don't understand what you mean.

I disagree with this - I think it's clear the opposite will happen, given the current state of politics.

Conservatives gained a lot of votes from Labour over Brexit - and they are now pushing more right-wing, extreme policies through because of the majority that gave them.

If the right know they have the vote of people traditionally on the left, they will become MORE right-wing because they can get away with it.

It's all a numbers game.

But 100% agree that the current state of politics is depressing.

Why would Keir Starmer make any further concessions to people who clearly are never going to vote Labour anyway?

It depends on whether you consider this to be about concessions or about dealing with the reality of the situation.

He's trapped on a continuum of ease versus difficulty over how men legally change to women when really what he needs to do is drop that altogether and start considering the actual problems caused by the existing law on children and sports etc, and the violent traits associated with the activism.
He's useless otherwise. But that's where LGBTQ labour have put him.

I keep bringing it up, but I maintain the Mumsnet Party™️ is the way forward - enough users to field a candidate in every constituency; a wide breadth of experience in all sectors - health, education, law, business, etc; form for putting politicians on the spot with hard hitting questions and a (mostly) firm grasp on reality! Stands to reason J K Rowling will be our Party Leader.

All you need to do is fill in application form, write a constitution, have a finance policy in place and pay a fee of £150.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/how-register-your-political-party/what-you-need-do-register

Sign me up!

If the naturally left voters are forced right by the left looney extremism, then yes, inevitably, the right will become a lot more centrist. Considering our right by American standards is quite far left, we may even end up with a centre left party with both a conscience AND a capacity for sense and reality.

That’s a dream worth pursuing, Frood.

Does anyone know of any new party forming along these lines? I really am surprised I haven’t heard of anyone stepping into that very visible space. The Women’s Equality Party is a sick joke (and the iPhone tried to make ghat a ‘dick’ joke!) and the Greens are fully captured.

Should we all join the SDP?

Well said Frood.

If the naturally left voters are forced right by the left looney extremism, then yes, inevitably, the right will become a lot more centrist. Considering our right by American standards is quite far left, we may even end up with a centre left party with both a conscience AND a capacity for sense and reality. Or possibly the two extreme ends of the right and left will break away and go to their extremes and actually electable centrist parties will develop instead. We can hope. It's too depressing to think the current political crop represents the best that can be found.