Vote for local Tory candidate or spoil vote?

So if Tories get power, but Sunak gone, then hope for opposition against Self-ID etc will vanish.

No way. The Conservatives have learned their lesson on this (IMO). They'll go even stronger against gender ideology especially if Kemi Badenoch becomes leader, which is a strong possibility.

It isn’t in the last few months.
And one of the Conservatives who most understands the issues on an intellectual level is Kemi Badenoch.

In the debate last night Starmer did say he agrees with safe spaces

Note he said ‘safe spaces’ NOT single sex spaces. Women’s need to privacy and dignity do not count and he thinks mixed sex spaces are ‘safe’ spaces.

One thing to understand is that it is multi issue.

As opposed to Labour who have the destruction of women’s rights as one of their priorities?

Exactly where I am. I want Labour to win, to fix public services and restore faith in politicians, but I want there to be a strong opposition to hold them in check esp re women's safe spaces.
In the debate last night Starmer did say he agrees with safe spaces "for women, biological women" (which makes him a TERF lol) so I want a strong opposition to ensure he follows through on this.

@Barleycat exactly. My biggest priority is that the tories (and reform) do not win. Everything else can be worked on later. I compare my life as a working single mum under labour to my current life as a working single mum under the tories and it's a no brainer. There will be many others who are being crippled by lack of childcare, universal credit etc. There is now talk of closing down paediatrics at our local hospital and sending sick children out of town. This is the kind of issue affecting (mostly) women that I see all around me that needs fixing. No party is ideal at the moment, they all have more issues than a hachette partwork but getting the current shower back for another go is unthinkable.

I am voting Tory. No way would I vote for any of the other candidates. I fully expect Labour to win but if they win by a landslide it will be a nightmare. There must be a decent opposition and the Tories are the only ones to provide that. They are also the only ones to speak up on Women’s rights in Holyrood.

How can those voting Tory, know that their candidate will act for them on this particular issue? Do they have a track record of being GC? Have they been supportive in the past? What have they done locally to support women's rights?

Have they done anything to stop men in prisons, refuges or toilets? Spoken out about boys in girls' toilets? Made a stand against Transgender ideology in schools and the NHS? If so, that's fantastic and I'm sure they'll keep up the good work.

Since they're so supportive of women I'm sure they also want better and cheaper childcare, more investment in the NHS and women's issues such as maternity care, which is dreadful. I'm sure they'll take up the mantle with gusto.

I don't understand why anyone thinks the Tories will do anything when they've had 14 years in power. Voting on this as a single issue is crazy.

I am indebted to Hillaire Belloc for the following advice:

"And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse."

I've been having a similar dilemma, so I've spent the day looking carefully at all 8 of our candidates.

As luck would have it, I've got an independent candidate standing who is an ex Green MP (thrown out for GC views / daring to suggest safeguarding women and children) so she is definitely getting my vote and my support overall. Her policies are also good, so she's ticking pretty much all of my boxes.

If it weren't for 'finding' her, then I genuinely don't know what I'd have done. I would previously have voted for my excellent local MP, but I'm in a totally new mashed up constituency with a load of mostly unknowns.

I think that it's healthier to have an effective opposition, so given that Labour are predicted to have a large majority it can't hurt to vote for someone else who's got a good chance of being elected. A spoilt paper or a vote for someone with no chance is a wasted opportunity IMO.

I'm going to be nose-holding & voting Tory because in my constituency the race is always between them & the LDs & I've given up on the LDs since the Coalition. Labour treats us here with disdain: no leaflets, no canvassing, no interest whatsoever. We usually get a very late, grubby A5 sheet stuffed through the door just before the election date, naming someone we've never heard of. LDs & Tories produce stuff on local issues even when there isn't an election coming up.

I've got the same dilemma as several PPs. It's been such a safe Tory seat in the past that my vote never counted but this time the polls suggest Reform is splitting the "right-leaning" vote enough here that the Labour guy might get in. And I don't think any party should have as many seats as some of the polls suggest Labour is going to get. Every government needs to face some sort of opposition to rein in their worst instincts.

The current Tory, if not loudly GC, is definitely sympathetic and has been an OK constituency MP. I could actually go to him if I had an issue.

The Labour candidate is dreadful and it's clear will do exactly what he's told to do by party HQ. He doesn't know the area and didn't even turn up to the candidate hustings (which annoys me more than it probably should).

I've never voted Tory and don't support much/most of what they've done over the past 14 years. But I may have to hold my nose and vote for the current MP just to try and keep a worse guy out and also to have one more person on the opposition benches who might actually represent us. Hate being in this position though.

I came onto Mumsnet today in the hope of finding a thread like this. I have five options in my area (Green, Tory, Reform, Labour & Lib Dem - no independents or SDP). It's between Labour and the Tories here. Greens have lost the plot so I would never vote for them. Ditto with the Lib Dems.

Our Labour candidate is new and I have written to her but have had vague responses back. Our long standing Tory MP might as well as be a cardboard cutout who get hoiked around to do photo shoots at weekends.

I have been distinctly unimpressed with Sir KS and some of his colleagues and their pathetic responses on the issue (I know it was a while ago but saying that it's not right to say that only women have cervixes was utterly pathetic. And I hate the way he continues to paint Rosie Duffield's interventions as 'toxic').

If I had Rosie Duffield as my MP, she'd definitely get my vote. If I had Dawn Butler she definitely wouldn't get my vote. However, mine's an unknown quantity and, as she's new, will probably follow the party line on everything.

My options are to abstain (hate to do this), spoil my ballot, or vote Labour to GTTO. I am torn. What a choice we have this time!

A few Tories have tried to bring in self ID, Maria Miller being one of them.

I think our discussion is completely at cross purposes.

Labour’s Gender Recognition ‘Reform’ is full of problems and will bring the GRCs, (Labour invention), which should not be there in the first place being as they are an legal lie and bound to cause problems, much easier to get than they are at present and even more harmful to spouses.

As Bridget Philipson has specifically told us, GRCs, not biological sex, will allow males into women’s single ‘sex’ spaces, in spite of Kier deliberately conveying the impression that this would not be the case.

and, B P has also let us know that any clause in the newly prepared school guidelines, seeking to stop the teaching of the concept that a child might be in the wrong body/have a clashing gender, will be removed by Labour.

They also plan to ‘ban conversion therapy’ while remaining oblivious to how ‘gender affirming care of potentially gay children is^ conversion therapy, just as it is also an attempt to trans the problems of former abuse, living with homophobia, autism, being adopted, or just of a gender non conforming mind-set, into some sort of physically and mentally wrecked state of false escape from the past - in a mimickry of an opposite sex stereotype.

Didn't May also try to bring in self id? Thatcher - well, the only good thing I can think of is when some in the party wanted to scrap mortgage tax relief, Mrs T refused because she wanted people to own their own homes. I know I benefitted from that one at a time when money was very tight for me. Otherwise I've got nothing. I still refuse to even see the film of her funeral.

It's a bit telling that Labour seem to use women in their party e.g. as caretaker leaders but never elected ones, or use the rest of us as something to shame the Tories with (supporting the WASPI women - but now they're not going to compensate the WASPI women if they get into governement).

I could have written every word of this. After 54 years of voting LibDem/Labour I've just voted Conservative for the first time. This is a single issue election as far as I'm concerned and I don't want to end up with Ed Davey as Leader of the Opposition.

Really? I thought the greens & Lib Dem’s were all for it? And the SNP was only stopped by Westminster!

Practically every party has backtracked on self-id. It's not exclusive to the Tories.

Exactly... Which is one of my reservations in voting for Rosie. She has no power in the party unfortunately. Despised and ignored by KS.

Thank you for the link but it is for 2017. I had already mentioned that Conservatives back-tracked on self-ID, and started putting on the brakes in general in many ways which I mentioned.

Please would you tell me which TRA other than Penny Mordaunt could be voted as the next Conservative leader?

As for others who are TRAs to the possible detriment of children and women’s’ wellbeing and safety, I know of,

Caroline Noakes,
Penny Mordaunt
The former sugar-daddy pimp who is a transwoman part time.

Who else, please?

The Labour Women’s Declaration and some Labour MPs are wonderful, but they are suppressed. Which is in itself a sign of something really awful.

I think that Labour will win by a landslide, so it’s probably unlikely that your preferred tory candidate is elected, you certainly don’t need to worry that you’ll be supporting a tory administration!

Spoiling your ballot paper just equates your vote to an average split between the parties in your constituency- not really worth going out for imo