Harriet Harman says women are women, or men who are 'certified' women.

Do Labour think that, come the real, intense pre election campaigning, this will not be something thrown at them at every single opportunity? I just see it increasing with the Tories’ desperation for votes and interviews with Labour candidates are going to be excruciating.

But even if they believe it, believing it so hard when they KNOW that the electorate doesn't believe it, and being willing to throw half the electorate under the bus for the sake of it, is deeply odd.

We need a political system which would allow a new party to come along and win, like Macron's party did in France in 2017, so that long established parties such as Labour can be wiped out by the electorate if they become taken over by lunatics.

I think it is as simple as they believe in gender ideology or at least the party main backers do.

The left is sold on 'identity' in the western world. Even with the harms that can be seen in Canada and the USA, Trudeau and Biden STILL talk about harms to trans people without recognising the women and children who fall as collateral damage.

Unfortunately the LP aligns itself with these politics.

So that is why they are doing it, because they believe that men who say they are women are women and they don't care what harms that causes others.

I think we all need to start loudly questioning why they want it to happen.

Because this should, by rights, be a fringe issue. Even if you care deeply about trans people's rights and safety, campaigning for third spaces rather than infringing women's rights would seem to be the obvious approach.

So if that's not what they're doing, if they're dead set on this approach which requires women and girls to compromise their own rights and safety for the sake of this small minority, I want to know how and why this position was reached.

I want to know who, from this powerful lobby group, has got so much power within the Labour Party. I want to know which organisations have donated to Labour. I want to understand where the money and power behind this policy position are coming from. Because I can't see anything else which would make a mainstream political party just ignore both science and fairness in this way. And that, to me, seems wholly undemocratic. Especially since there is no other party on the political left which has taken the opposite approach.

I think they’re too deep in. Ideology and politically

It’s related to their base and who will make a noise if they don’t get what they want

Unions and centre left media occupy the same space

Aligned to TRAs vocally or trying to get women to look the other way

What's in it for them?

Self-satisfaction. Smugness. Feeling virtuous. Feeling righteous. Felling superior.

God knows. The GRA was passed without fanfare, so they werent doing it to appeal to the electorate.

They dont speak the truth in public, so they know the public dont want men to enter women and girls spaces.

But they want it to happen anyway.

Harriet is a fool, her judgment is warped and has been for a while. Her past connection to PIE is price of that. She did apologize for it, however her statement at Fawcett proves she is still a fool.

Woman = adult female (Starmer)

Woman = adult with "female" marker on ID document.(Harman)

Wrong on so many levels, but consistent.

So much this.

What I still don't get is WHY.

WHY are they doing this?

What on earth do they think is in it for them?

We should be really glad HH is speaking plainly after a long period of Starmer apparently tacking back to some semblance of reality. Her plain speaking, that can only be borne of absolute confidence that this policy will not scupper the election of a Labour govt, is the only thing we need to bear in mind, because Starmer's pronouncements are just a truncated version of her statement here, which is Labour policy.

Starmer says only that women are "adult females". HH says "adult females are women plus those with a GRC stating women". Ergo, Starmer is deliberately only mentioning the first half of HH definition. We all remember his "99% of women don't have a penis". For all the sound and fury since, this hasn't changed.

HH is a player, and like all politicians she is easy with messaging. But she's also the closest we can see to a cultural elite, one of those on the long march thru the institutions.

Imagine, early in your activist politics and influencing change in the Labour Party, she pushes the PIE line, for this to blow up in her face. A half century later she's on track to be in power to lock down a policy that effectively negates woman as a meaningful category.

It's not called the long march for nothing.

This would be because they are absolutely fine with the situation as it is and still plan to escalate it at high speed further in men's favour and to the subordination of women. The confusing hints of noises that light might be dawning just a little bit on them is merely marketing in hope of stupid women being fooled long enough to vote for their own oppression.

Labour still seems far away from acknowledging the problems within the law.

They talk about the importance of recognising gender, but dont state how gender is defined and diagnosed. And dont say explicitly that a man with gender is given a female birth certificate.

They talk about the importance of protecting GR in the EqA, but dont talk about the fact that GR is self defined and allows men to be issued with female passports.

They say that they support SSE , but fail to mention that they allow services providers to exclude men from womens spaces, not force them to do so. And how service providers can exclude men given some have state issued female id. Woman and girls entering a female changing rooms dont know if the service provider excludes men or not.

They are talking as if the law is fit for purpose.

I'm fucking sick of it.

Labour doesn't give a shit about women who are harmed by men accessing our spaces. If they did they would commit to proper single sex spaces and would either say having a GRC doesn't get a male access or, even better, repeal it altogether.

Yes.

Here, in a nutshell, you can see demonstrated both the respect that Labour have for women and for the electorate, and their plans for honesty with the electorate.

Make your decisions accordingly. How happy are you to be governed by those who think so very little of women, and intend to lie and deceive you because they dare not be open about their intent?

Given the quality of the witnesses we're watching in the JP court case, I honestly wonder if Labour at this point are so locked into their echo chamber that they've lost any lingering awareness that there are still people out there with actual intelligence, unprogrammed, with capacity for critical thought. As opposed to programmable muppets who are madder than a box of frogs.

Ha at this

I make no apology for still hoping to be able to vote Labour if at all possible. I am also not stupid, which is why I'm following events as closely as I can.

The fact that they could have used the conference to clear up any ambiguity, and chose not to, leads me to conclude that they want it this way.

If your political opponents are able to make political capital out of saying that humans can't change sex, that's a you problem. It means you're a fucking idiot.

Yep, Rishi using the right-wing conspiracy theory that men aren't women to appeal to all the crazies that believe in biological reality.

I'm glad that Labour are saying these things. They seem to be moving away from "this never comes up on people's doorsteps" and tacitly acknowledging that it does.

But it's clear from their responses that they have heard women's concerns and they don't give a shit. They're coming out with these carefully crafted responses which make it clear that they don't intend to change their views or their approach at all, but they're hoping that if they say these things women will be reassured enough to vote for them.

It's Brexit all over again. Massive "both sides" energy.

It's become very clear to me that nothing that placates the other side is going to satisfy me, so unless they come out and clearly tell these misogynist activists to get back in their box before the next election, Labour can do without my vote.

Harriet was always a bit too Blairy for me. But she was very good in the HoC , as acting PM before Brown took over iirc. Very disappointing - and a bit worrying.