Trans row threatens to overshadow Lib Dem conference

Well I hear now Farage also "isn't sure" if paracetamol causes Autism, so backing his biggest donor all the way.

There going to be a lot of women in pain for pregnancy and childbirth that can scream his name with venom I suppose. Scientology here we come.

Of course the LD gave the award to a man. How very predictable. It is all just too depressing. Bet that made No1 spot in some mag read by 130 transwomen or something, meanwhile we can just disenfranchise 51% of the population.

Sarah Ludford 🇬🇧 🇮🇪🇪🇺 🇺🇦

Does this not put the LibDems in breach of the Equality Act under which, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, ‘woman’ means biological woman?
EdwardJDavey said ‘we’ (the party) ‘entirely accept the SC jt’, but he seems totally content for the party to continue to break the law.
Quote
Dont Walrus, we'll Walryou

Replying to @JournalistJill and @jk_rowling
In related news the Lib Dems have just given the annual award for an exceptional Liberal Democrat woman to... a man
https://x.com/MartinEgg3/status/1970777425639563524

It is less about the opinions being taken seriously, and more about the consequences of not taking the people who have those opinions seriously.

Surely the fact (assuming it is a fact) that ordinary people who are often not particularly well educated, and many will be of below average intelligence, voted Brexit, then Johnson, then maybe Farage, when I would argue all three were never going to address their problems, is precisely why we (centrists, leftists) need to listen to their concerns and address them, as that is the only way they will not inflict the next level of harm on us all by voting for a grifter like Farage.

But on top of that, if you asked the average person on that UTK march, "do you want a 5% pay rise or a 50% reduction in immigration?" I would not be surprised if 90% said a reduction in immigration. You might think they're fools for making that decision, but there is nothing inherent in the universe that makes that so, and telling them they're fools is more likely to cause a doubling down than a change of heart.

If half the country wants big change but can't articulate exactly what, then they will inevitably vote for the person who can articulate an answer to their problems. If Badenoch is going to fail to articulate convincingly, and Starmer is going to fail to try to convince them, and the rest are a bunch of "men can have vaginas" fools or Farage, then Farage is going to be incredibly popular (until he fails by his own standards as I have no doubt he will).

I don't even know if he needs to suggest solutions tbh. Acknowledging the issues is more than other politicians are doing.

Another striking feature of Reform voters is their pessimism and discontent, and another factor is that a chunk of people are so disaffected they're at the 'burn it all down' stage.

If nobody listens, people just get angrier, and instead of looking for solutions they end up looking for outlets for their rage.

I guess you could say a lot of the Reform vote is emotionally driven, its not necessarily reasoned.

'Reform supporters may be Britain’s most dissatisfied voters: perhaps the most distinctive feature of Reform’s support base is their shared sense of pessimism about the state of the country: they are more likely than any other voter group to believe that things in the UK are getting worse, that the country is becoming more dangerous, and - tied with the Green Party - to believe that the country needs radical change.'

Let's hope we dont end up with a Green/Reform coalition, eh?

Presumably because the causal link is not perceived to be so clear cut.

Photos of boats + high published immigrant numbers + more people who are not white on your local street + higher house prices and rents = "It is obvious they are all linked" (and it would remain obvious even if it just so happened to be true that an academic with incredible research proved it was all a coincidence - they simply would not be believed other than perhaps by other academics who supported and fully understood the methodology.)

If scientists say average global temperatures are rising by 0.5 degrees every 40 years (my figures for arguments sake not real figures) and this causes famine and war and immigration to the UK then many people will perceive the truth to be "0.5 degrees is nothing". The link is simply not as obvious. Also they might think famine in africa is not my problem, and if there are wars why are the fighting age men not fighting - why are they here?"

And not only that, of course, many people would take the view that there are problems in the UK and that we have no moral obligation to help foreign people, nor can we afford to. And arguably they'd be right on those things too.

I woudl strongly suggest that "elites" and the "the left" would do very well to consider that what is perceived to be true because it looks obvious it is true is MUCH more important than what can be proed to be true by academics.

Not least when academia claims men can have vaginas and a lesbian can get her partner pregnant if she doesn't wear a condom.

If that is what worries people why do they refuse to engage with climate change, wars in other countries and aid? We know where these people are coming from and why.

RedToothBrush

I think that some things are "obvious" whether they are true to not, and they are "obvious" to all but a tiny tiny minority of incredible brains who have researched in detail, or those people who are ideologically opposed to what is "obvious".

Here are some "obvious" things, some of which may be able to be proven to be incorrect, and which hard left open borders ideologues oppose -

If the population rises due to immigration then that makes it harder to get a doctors appointment, unless government is pumping lots of extra money into the NHS

If the population rises due to immigration then house prices and rents will rise, and more houses will be built in the countryside and on the green belt around towns, which reduces biodiversity and people's ability to access green spaces

If we assume that there is such a thing as a British culture, then immigrants dilute it, and with enough immigrants it will ineitably be destroyed.

If Muslims continue to immigrate in high numbers and out-breed non-muslims, then one day the country will be majority muslim

If the UK become majority muslim we might vote in a party similar to the Taliban.

Whilst I fully support science, research, facts and evidence-based objective truth I also believe that perception is hugely important. People's perception is that it is bloomin obvious that overcrowding, and house prices and building on the green belt and loss of what it is to be british and failing NHS are all linked, and changing the narrative is simply not going to happen by academic argument. The only way it can happen is if house prices and rents and waiting lists all fall, and Britain starts feeling more british again, all whilst immigration stays at a high level. And this would have to happen over a period of time.

I always say that if you have a shit fake narrative, turn it upset down and questions from a different point of view to work out if the narrative holds up. Fake narratives collaspe very quickly when examined from an alternative angle. Exploring from an alternative angle also means you don't take on people who are entrenched head on - you approach the same subject from the side and can give other perspectives which they are more likely to take on board and consider. This helps to increase critical thinking.

Its not as hard to do as people think.

Its about resetting the landscape of how people are thinking rather than just supplying them with preset conclusions.

Our problem locally ISN'T that there's not enough school places. They are CLOSING schools here as there aren't enough children...

They aren't building around here, we aren't getting immigrants, but its harder to get a doctors appointment. Cos the population is getting older and they have more medical needs.

We can't get appointments because we live in the wrong area and then we get shunted from service to service because no fucker wants to take responsibility for you because its out of the wrong budget. Or because you aren't the 'perfect' patient. These are administrative decisions and nothing to do with actual service provision.

Public transport is something that happens on other planets (we are north of London and not in a city centre).

There are lots of places like this. They aren't even part of this discussion cos we are too busy focusing on the immigration argument because Farage went 'loooooookkk squirreelll' and set the narrative.

Why aren't people questioning that narrative and where it DOESN'T apply and asking why it DOESN'T apply, because if you do this it starts to make the narrative fall apart because its demonstratably inaccurate.

@RedToothBrush is spot on that Farage notices, names and discusses issues thay other politicians avoid, and that he deals in disaffection. I hadn't thought of it in those terms but that describes it precisely.

And whether it's simplistic or not, it's very easy to say, yes, your GP is overbooked and your mum can't get an appointment till Monday week, and you can't get your kid into the local primary, because that massive housing estate (350 homes) has been bolted onto your small market town, following the 270 houses that went up three years ago - and not forgetting the new one going up as we speak... And housebuilding is going on like this because the population is increasing and that is due to immigration.

A lot of people live in places defined by ONS as 'rural' precisely because they like the peace and quiet. They are royally fucked off by the suburbanisation of the countryside, take it from me.

Couple that with the contempt of the political class for a large part of the electorate, and I'll honestly be amazed if they don't vote for Nigel.

That's pretty difficult with more and more made in China.

Politicians love sending manufacturing to China - it's great for our UK carbon emission headlines

We know massive savings can be made by investment in the right area.

It is insane to not recognise this and instead handicap the country with ridiculous fiscal restrictions.

Running a country by a simplistic spreadsheet doesn't work.

I meant 'cut your cloth' in terms of either raising taxes or making budget cuts or increasing borrowing.

Investment has to be funded somehow, and Labour have boxed themselves in, with restrictions on how much they are prepared to tax or borrow.

However, it's not clear that any other party can square the circle either.

Joe Biden did the same. He appointed a man to a prominent post and thereby removed another opportunity for a woman.

I keep saying this as it's very true of the trans issues in a nutshell
If you acknowledge a problem, you have to do something about it if you are in a position of authority. Otherwise you admit you are failing to do your job properly.
This is why scandals and whistleblowers have such a terrible time because there's too many people covering their own arse .
This is why you won't see people saying 'oh yes we got this wrong, yes there is a massive problem with harms from promoting this in schools and medicalising children or enabling abusers.
Because if they admit this they open themselves up to massive liabilities.
Farage isn't in the same position. He doesn't have these liability issues.

Yes, I was far more hopeful when the Supreme Court made it clear that we could drop all of the "what is a woman anyway?" trans confusion and move on, but as has been pointed out no party has confronted it. I do feel it needs to be addressed and put upfront for clarity as Davey must realise that women need to know he isn't going to pull a Starmer and court their vote then ignore them in every area. It's great having them on our screens but if they take £ from PIP that's mostly women, they're not sorting out the baby 800 deaths pa in maternity wards, I've yet to see a Woman's Health Hub, we're likely to get screwed more on tax and we still haven't got absent fathers to foot their kids' bills, yet no mention by Phillipson of getting thousands of women out of UC and potentially back to work by doing so (my opinion on this is to use powers to take passport, repossess cars after a maximum of 6 months of the father refusing to pay or supply his full income). The trans is an added complication that muddies the waters on this as none of these issues actually affect them and by ignoring this the LD are really signing an invisible contract that they don't see or will be willing to ignore these real issues.

Farage deals with disaffection. That's his currency. The only way to stop Farage is to starve him of what he feeds on - public disaffection.
In other words acknowledge problem and offer reasonable solutions, stop blaming or smearing the public, improve access to services and facilities and offer an alternative positive solution.

This

It's not about cuts though. It's about wisely spending money rather than viewing it as cuts.

It's ridiculous. "We can't afford a walk-in centre" does not mean that you cut costs by closing the centre. You just shift a problem to a more expensive situation where more people use even more expensive A&E. It's not a cost cutting solution then - it's a service cutting solution that shoves the problem somewhere else with more acute problems and financial issues.

There isn't this thought process going on because we have closed ring fenced budgets responsible for certain things which are isolated from each other with no thought as to what then happens if that service is removed and the impact on other budgets.

'Cost cutting' mental health services so you can only get assessed over the phone and not in person means people don't end up in the system (autistic people are known to struggle with telephone assessments, leading to avoidance. Autistic people have higher rates of mental health problems in the first place so access should be thought about in these terms). If people present at crisis rather than earlier because you have had early intervention, it's much more expensive in the long run.

It's not like a household budget of buying things and they all work and this is the problem successive governments have made.

You cost cut by investing in services, even though it seems counter intuitive.

It represents a fundamental lack of understanding of how things work and is run off spreadsheets not an understanding of humanity.

In other words acknowledge problem and offer reasonable solutions, stop blaming or smearing the public, improve access to services and facilities and offer an alternative positive solution.

Unfortunately, I think part of the problem is that the country just doesn't have much money at the moment, so whichever way any government cuts their cloth, it's going to lead to dissatisfaction.

We would be in a better place without Brexit, but some of the problems that affect the UK are international (e.g. impact of Ukraine war on food prices), and also cause dissatisfaction in countries that on paper are doing better than us, so Farage can argue both that the problem isn't Brexit, and that we had the wrong Brexit.

I keep saying this as it's very true of the trans issues in a nutshell

If you acknowledge a problem, you have to do something about it if you are in a position of authority. Otherwise you admit you are failing to do your job properly.

This is why scandals and whistleblowers have such a terrible time because there's too many people covering their own arse .

This is why you won't see people saying 'oh yes we got this wrong, yes there is a massive problem with harms from promoting this in schools and medicalising children or enabling abusers.

Because if they admit this they open themselves up to massive liabilities.

Farage isn't in the same position. He doesn't have these liability issues. He doesn't have responsibility.

He isn't to blame for existing issues.

As soon as Reform gets power it'll go to shit because they haven't got the solutions. Experiments with Farages sister parties in Europe have gone badly for exactly this reason. Farage also knows this, and his aim is to dismantle certain structures as quickly as possible for his own ends before the public realise the implications. His agenda is not the same as the one the public want.

It astonishes me that the other parties can't get to grips with this, because they are also so self invested.

Ultimately the public loses in every scenario and we are locked into a spiral of decline because no one wants to step up.

I think the public as a whole probably do actually recognise this but take the attitude 'well it can't get any worse' when unfortunately it very much can but no one is willing to.

He's up against parties who have not listened to their voters, only their activists, and are paying the price

i think that's such an important often overlooked point. The vast vast majority of ppl are not members of political parties or political activists. Many MPs spend far too much time having internal party conversations with ppl who already think like them rather than talking to those that don't. The problem is this that party political system rewards this. It's the ppl that spend time on the internal conversations that get true promotions & ministerial jobs. Good constituency MPs who spend their time with their local population understanding the issues very rarely get listened to by the party machine.

Farage is an astute political operator who tells people what they want to hear. He's very weak on things like costing policies and explaining how they will work. He's up against parties who have not listened to their voters, only their activists, and are paying the price. The Libs benefit from the ABF vote but they want you to believe men can become women and that doesnt go down well with the majority of the British public. If politicians lie about something so basic what can you trust them with?

Our economy is not doing well and while Labour have tried to do something about that the question is whether it can deliver before the next election - and whether Starmer can hold out enough to see it through. The plan doesnt really address the inequalities in Britain obviously enough, they need some headline policies that are more obvious. Removing higher rate tax relief on pension contributions and pinching Reform's idea about not paying interest on bank deposits would be popular moves with the voters they need to attract.

If you want to keep reform out then on an individual level the best thing you can do is try to spend your money in a way that supports British jobs and the British economy. That's pretty difficult with more and more made in China.

I agree with all of that @RedToothBrush
However I do still prefer the LD to any other option.
I am hopeful the Green party under BraMaster will hoover up the trans vote and do more to entice them away from LD in a public show boating way.

I do think it's a death knoll to any party to try to tackle the trans issue, just as it was to mention Brexit. The population affected is tiny but they are nasty and obsessive and turn the papers and police to their bidding with the smallest incentive.

Farage lies yes.

But what Farage does is identify a social problem (s) that other parties don't and he acknowledges it.

He then lies, twists and misrepresents that but he has picked up on a legitimate grievance or disaffection.

This makes him different.

The other parties pretend there isn't a problem, use spin to de-legitimise the complaint or smear the person making it by questioning their character or their behaviour.

I've mentioned this on the Charlotte Tetley thread.

We have departments and services fobing off people with problems to other services and departments because they aren't presented with the perfect case who ticks all the right boxes. And there's an over riding attitude of 'you aren't my problem'.

People like Charlotte Tetley and Sandie Peggie represent people who have more difficult lives or views which aren't middle class perfect and they come across attitudes which are almost Victorian like in their morality and how they are to blame for their own situation.

As I said my son is currently in an NHS Doom Loop where no one wants to take responsibility due to Trust Boundaries and not being able to work with neighbouring Trusts and it's utterly appalling. We are able to navigate it better than most and have put in a formal complaint because they don't know their arses from their elbows. For us it's a one off, but for some people this type of thing is daily life which frankly sends you insane with it's Kafkaesque ridiculousness and inhumanity.

If you are up against this daily, then the attraction of anyone acknowledging that - even if they are known for lying - can't be underestimated.

There is this growing sense that unless you grow up, go to university, get married, buy a house, have a professional job - or at least are in the process of aspiring to this, you've somehow failed at life and you should have tried harder / are to blame for you own failure. Unless you use all the right language, present in the right way or do all the right things you are a nuisance because you are being difficult somehow. Even if it's totally beyond your own control.

Farage deals with disaffection. That's his currency. The only way to stop Farage is to starve him of what he feeds on - public disaffection.

In other words acknowledge problem and offer reasonable solutions, stop blaming or smearing the public, improve access to services and facilities and offer an alternative positive solution.

When someone goes to A&E for something minor it's not because they are uneducated. It's because they don't have easy access to medical assistance because the GPs are making it difficult. People are prepared to wait for hours in the knowledge they will be eventually seen rather than fobbed off. Telling people not to attend A&E 'unless it's an emergency' does not deter this group - it neglects to acknowledge the problem and instead frame the public as stupid. It does, as an unintended consequence, deter the diligent elderly person who needs urgent care because they are afraid they are 'wasting the doctors time'. This is all easy to blame on immigration, rather than things like long term attempts to 'cut costs' by shortsightedly closing walk in services - which then end up costing more as people go to A&E instead.

It's a fundamental lack of understanding human behaviour and how you can't just stop certain behaviours which aren't 'perfect'. You have to create services which reflect real life and real world experiences.

The LDs are never going to get close to achieving this, when they literally have a male walking around telling people not to believe what they see with their own eyes. Transgenderism is the physical representation of the concept of this modern day middle class Victorian Morality in a nutshell. It can't coexist with this idea of 'listening to the ordinary public'.

The LDs just don't get it.

I think the problem is that although Farage proposes no workable solutions, it has become apparent that the solutions proposed by governments in the 1980s and 90s aren't working either, and it's not clear where new ideas are supposed to come from.

Privatising industry hasn't created any magic money, and in some cases has just contributed to decline.

International trade has not ended conflict and many people just feel more financially vulnerable because of competition. (Although they also don't want to experience the drop in living standards that would result from fewer foreign imports).

Everyone knows that we can't just keep importing workers from abroad to solve the problem of our ageing population, but nobody has come up with a feasible alternative.

Because Farage has no responsibility it is more easy for him to point out the problems, which creates the impression that he is a truth teller, and because he offers 'easy' solutions, it's more comfortable to listen to him.