Are you voting in the next general election purely on the transgender issue?

Ps Thankfully Christianity does not advocate for the legislation of enforced belief.

Yes! This!

I would like a government who will build laws around this please. In education, healthcare and all public life. I would also like to make sure that private companies do it too and anyone who opposes it, even by speaking out against it, faces the full force of the law.

Praise be.

🙃

Eppur si muove. Unluckily for Welsh Labour.

I know this. Not the same, but it was not a regional or constituency vote, a point one saw slowly dawning on the faces of the BBC referendum night team as they realised that the votes for Brexit in a Remain constituency counted. The UK voted, not its constituent parts, and the Leave votes in NI and Scotland, where overall people voted Remain (I have feeling this had something to do with Scottish independence btw), carried the majority Welsh and English Leave votes over the 50%+1 requirement.
(Leave also won on a constituency basis.)

What's wrong is that the the Cass review came up with the wrong answer. So Cass is wrong. The evidence is wrong. Medicine is wrong. Child development is wrong.

The sun goes round the earth. The Bible says so. God it made it that way.

This, with bells on ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Following evidence-based medical care is surely the cornerstone for how the NHS should operate. It informs where funds are spent and whether it's an effective use of public money.

Voting to throw the evidence out in a Billy Bragg-esque manoeuvre (I'm assuming the Welsh government decided it was more important to be on the same side of the table as the lobby groups who told them why evidence-based care didn't matter and/or their donation providers) says far more about the Welsh Labour government's ability to govern than it does about "just" the "transgender issue".

Does UK Labour show any signs that it differs from Welsh Labour on this?Starmer would like single sex wards but perhaps including "women" with penises. It's difficult to know, because apparently it's all very complicated.
Should I trust him to sort out the NHS?
Wes Streeting wants to support the Cass Report recommendations... great!.... so that everyone including "trans children" gets access to good care.... Eh? Does he understand the recommendations at all? Should I trust him to lead a health service that dovetails effectively with schools when this will do nothing to address the pipeline of "exceptional cases" of "transgender children"? How much public money will Wes Streeting waste because he can't see this issue?

As per the comment above, how will Labour improve the NHS?

This with fucking bells on.

It is precisely because i want a socialist government (actually socialist, not in thrall to whichever well connected boys club is currently lobbying them behind doors closed to commoners like me) long term that I would ever consider a ballot spoil.

Gender is the current luxury cause and bad enough but lots of other worrying lobbyists are similarly well connected and powerful and prone to influencing government behind our backs.

Exactly this, I want a non-Tory government that is going to get on with the task of sorting things out, not one that is in thrall to gender identity politics. I wish this was a niche problem but it isn’t.

I have to say it’s a very sorry state of affairs when the most compelling reason to vote Labour is that voting the Tories out is “a good start”. I’ve no doubt that Labour will win the next election but it looks like it’ll be because people are sick of the Tories rather than because they are inspired by Labour. And if Labour then make themselves absurd by following the SNP’s obsession with identity politics and hate speech laws and calling voters racist etc they probably won’t last very long in office.

People saying they will spoil their ballot really? You may feel politically homeless but if so getting the Tory's out has to be a start?

I hate the Tories, even though they align with my views more than Labour and tge Lib Dems on this particular issue. However, I absolutely cannot bring myself to vote Lib Dem or Labour, partly because of this issue, partly because I have seen nothing to make me want to vote for them. Spoiling my ballot paper won't really make any difference though. The Lib Dems always win here, and I have no doubt they will again. The MP is very popular.

Can one of the posters on here who are planning on voting Labour to save the NHS please explain specifically which of Labours policies have led them to believe that that is the way forward for the NHS?

https://nation.cymru/news/mss-vote-against-recommendations-of-cass-review/

Really?

What is wrong with them

Labour in Wales have just voted to NOT adopt the recommendations of the Cass review.

Can someone tell me HOW labour are going to save the NHS when they ignore evidence based medicine?

Linked to the PR, shortlists and calibre of MPs issue, here's Ash Regan on Radio 4 with Evan Davis:

https://twitter.com/AlbaParty/status/1786093302800065005?t=yOttILm4Pzi6V3dDabw71g&s=19

To me, this is why "the transgender issue" (as per the OP title), "women's rights" issue, as per other comments is central to everything. Once we get belief recognised in law - which I fully expect Labour to do when in government - the stability of government is lost. Labour talk a good rhetoric about fixing the mess of the last 14 years under the Tories. I would love to see this done. I would love to see a Lib Dem government taking forward the policies that align with my own values and understanding of how a fair country is run. Labour come a close second for me. Issues such as SEN provision, poverty/austerity, faster care under the NHS, fair access to quality education, crime prevention, better prison services etc etc.

However, all I see on the horizon if Labour is elected is the whole thing descending in to the farce that is playing out right now in Scotland.
The real issue of governing the country becomes impossible.

CBA to RTFT but the answer is yes, and I'm not going to be shamed by anyone who tells me not to put my own interests as a woman first.

I doubt I will vote Tory (never have) but I'm not going to vote Labour, LibDem or Green either. So, unless the SDP or a good independent stands locally, I won't be voting.

I do not trust Labour one iota. I will never forget or forgive the way they were prepared to throw my rights away and call me a bigot for protesting (and, yes, I know the Tories were just as bad till recently, but I never supported them in the first place).

The Labour Party may have more women, but have never allowed a female to lead them. As far as I can see, the only party that has allowed their own female members to be subjected to very real threats of physical violence by men in their own party, is Labour. Without any repercussions or consequences by the way. They have also threatened to expel women in their party for saying men are not women and denied the women a stand at their own party conference for gods sake, not reassuring me.

• also when I say "idiots", I don't mean necessarily on the women's rights issue. Just generally low calibre politicians.

No. My parents as devout Catholics always voted for whichever candidate was most anti abortion. That was a moral line they were not prepared to cross but ultimately it was a futile battle.

As with that issue, the horse has already bolted on this one. I tend to believe that the greater numbers coming out as trans are connected with the greater individualism that is so encouraged in right wing thought. And the way that capitalism pretty much commodifies everything, including gender.
Labour isn’t quite socialist enough for me, and I was recently impressed by a spokesperson for the Lib Dems who talked about tackling tax avoidance within large corporations and multi national giants operating on our shores.
I’ve moved away from focusing on the trans issue in order to save my sanity. Critical and intellectual approaches to the issue just get shouted down so I’ve decided that those who make those choices about gender and the body will just have to live with the consequences- whether good or bad. It remains a tiny proportion of the population. At least puberty blockers seem to be off the menu.
But overall it just isn’t such an important hill to die on- the NHS and the environment are to my mind far far more important. Most especially the environment. We only voted for the police commissioner here, but when it comes to the general election I shall be looking carefully at Labour, Lib Dem and Green for the best manifesto. But will probably try to choose the one most likely to get the tories out in my constituency. A Tory stronghold. We could do do with PR which would lead me to the Lib Dems or Greens- but I felt let down by the Lib Dems in 2010 (or was it 11, I forget!) and the Greens don’t have a chance in hell. The last time the NHS thrived was under New Labour, so that might guide my vote.

• I'm thinking that there are now enough women to push for reforms to the way Parliament does its business, etc. Make it more woman-friendly. Attitudes within Parliament have probably changed since the shortlists were brought in.

I used to be all for all-women shortlists because I saw it as a way to "leapfrog" societal barriers, to circumvent the prejudice that causes us all to favour men over women and get to a more representative Parliament more quickly. I also believed it was different to having all-black shortlists because 50% of us are women and around 5-7% of us are black, so the lack of female representation was more egregious and needed to be addressed more urgently. I also think the shortlists spurred on other parties, especially the Tories, to encourage good women candidates to stand and to look at how they treated prospective candidates if they were female.

The all-women shortlists have worked in terms of getting more women into Parliament, which is a good thing, but because qualification was not purely on merit, the quality is very mixed, shall we say. On the other hand, the Conservatives' "pure merit" approach has resulted in their share of idiots and Labour has some very bright and able women - sadly none of whom are brave enough to stand with Rosie Duffield.
Having said all that, I'm not sure where I stand on women-only shortlists - perhaps they should be scrapped now, even though the reasons for having them haven't gone away.

I disagree about short lists too. I want the best person to represent me. I don’t want a great local candidate removed just because he is a man. The other danger of the shortlist route is people short listed due to a specific characteristic may ‘forget’ they are still there to represent everyone. That is the other problem with PR - they represent the party not voters.

That is why I always say ‘look at the candidates’.

(to add, my edits were because I kept writing "short list" instead of "shortlist")

@Teddleshon do you know if there an easy way to see who came through this route? My gut reaction to your comment is that I wonder if it explains the mystery of how Dawn Butler got to be in a seat.

I've now read up on the Scottish proportional representation system and the similarities in terms of unintended consequences are interesting. In both cases, a list of individuals is drawn up (regional MSPs, all women shortlists) and, although the voting calculation methods are different (four rounds of calculations using a formula vs standard FPTP voting), the upshot is that anyone wanting to vote specifically for a political party rather than specifically for an individual candidate (which describes the majority of the "get the Tories out no matter what" posts in this thread) is leaving the door wide open to the potential of electing an unsuitable muppet who has been added to a list by the party.

@BonfireLady given some of the MP’s that Labour’s women only shortlists have produced, I’m with you!