Janice Turner on Labour u-turn

On the “undying love” list, possibly the most concerning are:

• adopt the histrionic sloganeering of lobby groups wholesale without any scrutiny of their assertions;
• fail to do any research or consider the wider implications of the position being adopted;
• ignore the harms to teenage girls.

Labour’s position on gender risked* few potential votes in a cost of living crisis but it made its politicians look weak, silly and extreme*.

This is the entire reason they have changed the policy.

I just can't believe it has taken years to burst the political bubble that had apparently sane people pretending they thought men could be women.

We've got to keep pushing, because there are still far too many men using women's facilities and far too many unwanted unisex facilities.

It would be interesting to compare and contrast what actions were considered necessary for the Labour Party to convincingly demonstrate its undying love for the Male Sexual Entitlement movement/community versus what actions it considers ‘good enough’ to convince women not to regard them as blatant misogynists and male supremacists.

One of those lists is going to be a lot longer than the other.

Those posters on here who’ve been arguing for a couple of years that Starmer has been playing the long game on this all this time may be seeing their hopes come to fruition. His “something that should not be said” statement is the one I found difficult to respect at the time but perhaps he’d simply let slip his strategy: avoid saying anything to rock the boat publically, sort it out behind the scenes, launch your new messaging in a managed way when it’s ready.

So he thinks they can transplant cervixes?

Obviously he failed human biology at school? 😁

If Labour do any more U-turns they will be spinning !!😁

If they have realised it's expedient to listen to their female voters then that is progress. It's not enough to win back my trust or respect - that's gone and may never come back - but if they really are talking to the Labour Women's Declaration, for whom I have a lot of time, then that's a real positive for me.
A public meeting between Starmer and LWD would be a good way of convincing me it's actually happening. A statement of support for clarifying the Equality Act would be another.

Angela Rayner would still concern me and I imagine she's a concern to Starmer too.

Bloody hell at them

I respect Janice’s opinion. i also come from a consistent standpoint that none of the main parties actually give a shit about women’s rights. And I’ll judge them by what they do not what they say. but saying the right thing openly often precedes doing the right things openly, so this a step in a good direction. I am happy to see the main opposition party finally hearing women’s views. Obviously yes it should have happened years ago. This is positive though an unthinkable previously,. There will be lots of set backs along the way. but I know most people do know that human biology matters and this will win out eventually.

Back in the day this board used to send tweets, emails and even cards to women in politics who stood up. I’m going to do that here, as I did after the Westminster Hall debate to all the gender critical speakers from each party. I’ll ask them to put recognising the importance of biological sex into their election manifesto, plus committing to reforming the equality act to clarify sex and gender and repealing GRA.

I’m not planning to waste time asking MPs where they were when everyone else was suffering for over a decade, even though obviously they were in the wrong not to have broken their cover years sooner. That was almost all MPs. We still need the vast majority of MPs to be on board with a pro-woman agenda. So there is a mountain to climb in front of us yet.

That requires consistent chipping away at individual and collective misogyny by sharing information and taking different sorts of action, which many women on here have been doing for years. We tend to need MPs more then they need us (until every 4 years we get an election) so this is a long game where usually the balance is not in our favour. As we approach 2024 GE the power scales start to tip, incumbent MPs who want to keep their jobs or gain support for their parties can see that. So right now is a big opportunity. Tell them what you want to see happen.

Any politician sticking their neck out on this will be getting a load of shitty TRA blowback on their social media and post bag. I’m not going to add to that. Purity politics is for the birds.

Oh, didn't you hear Lisa Nandy who used to be quite content with male rapists going to women's prisons?

It was the young activists in her local party to blame. It was them that done it. Nothing to do with me guv, (dis)honest!

And this corker

yes Bernard, it is now expedient because they realise just how far they got it wrong and that all this fuckwittery they indulged is harmful to women and the party everyone tells us is supposed to care for women, actively silenced women. Even their own MPs were abused in parliament for making the same stand they now want us to believe they are taking. Abused by Labour MPs.

This situation is ridiculous and Lisa Nandy trying to blame others means that she will never be leadership material. And she nearly was the leader!

Nothing about this new decision suggests that are to be trusted. This is a power move pure and simple.

NEVER FORGET

Come now we're not talking about Johnson or Cameron or.... anyone that sold their souls to Brexit to keep power.

They need to do a lot more to convince me. I will wait and see.

Just read the wes streeting apology article in the guardian and I do really think that changes like this will be like the first small crumbling in a dam.
They start to create a space in which it is 'legitimate' to raise certain concerns, make certain points.And once these points are spoken about more frequently, without the Labour party endorsing (through silence or words) the reflex slanders that they produce from transactivists, people will start to hear the words that are actually spoken without fearfully misframing them as transphobic.

Labour have finally realised that women's votes matter. Too little too late.

Lisa and Keir were both happy to shit on women when they thought our votes didn't matter.

It wasn't that they didn't understand the safeguarding concerns. It's bloody obvious to anyone with half a brain.

And what have they really said anyway. Do they still think men count as women? I need them to spell it out without the wishy washy evasive statements.

Whilst Labour are still selecting TRAs as parliamentary candidates, it doesn't matter what the Labour spokespeople say - the Labour TRAs will be in the Chamber voting to oppress women.

https://twitter.com/PompeySteph/status/1684799825168973824

Meanwhile back in the labour "reality"

What they really need to say is that they agree to the EHRCs recommendation on amending the Equality Act to say biological sex.

Until they do that adult human female means nowt.

I believe this is as good as it gets. Turning back on Self ID, belated apology to Rosie Duffield, LWD stands at conference.

Expecting anything substantially more is like expecting prominent uncompromising policies on Brexit, it's never going to happen.

Starmer is inching his way to power, one maddeningly drawn out modified policy position after another.

A bit more detail on how they'll modify the GRA, and their policy for trans conversion ban, is about all we can expect to get.

You know what, around 8 years ago my mum, a teacher (at that point in her mid fifties) expressed concern at the growing number of her students who were claiming to be transgender, expressing safeguarding concerns about the moment generally.

I was horrified, told her I didn't agree with her views and shut the conversation down.

Then, not long later, I'm not really sure when or how, I read something that made it very very clear in my head that there was genuinely something to be concerned about and suddenly everything she was saying just kind of dropped into place with crystal clear clarity for me.

We both now quietly get on with ensuring safeguarding is at the front of every decision made in our respective organisations.

So I'm not going to judge anyone doing a U turn.

As long as they mean it.

I do believe the U-turn is cynical. Most Labour policies now are cynical, derived from electoral calculation rather than principal.
But with the state of British politics being what it now is, I've totally given up on anything better than that. All that matters to me is ensuring that this particular weaselling around in pursuit of votes sticks. That they continue to believe it is in their interest to make sane, fair and evidence-based policy in relation to trans issues.
So I'm prepared to give them sweeties my vote if they continue moving in this direction. Only just, though. And only because the Tories are so intensely dangerous at the moment I am willing to set the bar depressingly low for any party that can get them out of power.

I think it might be harmful and counterproductive to trash their U-turn. By acting as if we trust them to some extent we might shame/incentivise them into positions that genuinely respect women's rights..

What a rat. 😡

The fact is, they're very likely to win the next GE, any change, any pressure we can put on them now is positive. I won't forgive or forget ever, it's fundamentally changed what I think about politicians, but if the penny has dropped it's a vote loser, good.

Also I saw something today about 4 Labour MPs receiving large donations from a Trans lobby group?

I think one of those donations was as much as nine years ago, but it should not have been accepted, and I am not yet persuaded that Labour have seen the light.

Making it easier to get a GRC does nothing to safeguard women in vulnerable situations, the definitions of 'woman', 'man', 'female' and 'male' etc need a lot more clarification, and protection of children and vulnerable adults from gender ideology and the very problematic Queer Theory is not even on Labour's radar yet.