Thread 44 Sunak: Hung parliament and Rishful thinking.

[DuncinToffee]

prevoius thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5066068-thread-43-sunak-seriously-scapegoating?page=40&reply=135107360

Interesting thread by nhs workers discussing his ideas earlier.

I saw that. 27 posts from people who said they wouldn’t work unpaid overtime. Which as far as I can see nobody’s suggested.

I went to see Michael Sheen in Nye last night. One of the things that struck me with real force was how many people (including his wife) thought he was a bit of a sell out and not left wing enough for all the compromises he made to get the NHS done. It really resonated with the current situation. Politics: the art of the possible.
Nye is awesome by the way. See it if you possibly can.

Nye’s brilliant. Highly recommended.

Badenoch complaining about "woke" companies and diversity initiatives

Kemi Badenoch orders British firms to 'end the woke madness' | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

"Mrs Badenoch, who was born in London to parents of Nigerian origin and grew up in the US and Nigeria, added: “Overwhelmingly, people want companies to recruit on merit, selecting the best person for the job without regard to race or gender, rather than social engineering to create ‘diverse teams’.”"

Meanwhile on the Conservative website

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion CCHQ is committed to encouraging equality, diversity, and inclusion amongst our workforce. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of our society. We commit to creating an inclusive and respectful working environment for all our people, reflecting the communities we serve and drawing on their rich and diverse perspectives to improve the services we deliver.

This commitment includes training managers and all other employees about their rights and responsibilities to help CCHQ provide equal opportunities in employment and to prevent bullying, harassment, victimisation and unlawful discrimination.

To support the development of more effective and inclusive employment, we will continuously review our training material and policies to assess their relevance to equality and diversity.

I always thought that ensuring some form of education and support for diversity meant you did in fact end up recruiting the best person for the job - not the one whose face fit your preconceptions.

@pointythings exactly, and it's hard to imagine her getting the role within the Tories without such stringent wording in their own employment policies... Imagine Gove/Mogg/Boris or any other Brexiteer seeing a black woman walking in and giving her a fighting chance in an interview!

Oh dear. Guess Labour won’t be such a landslide win after all.

"Labour will make it easier to change gender and is considering allowing a single family doctor to sign off on the decision under plans to “simplify” the process.

The party is considering how to make the legally binding certificate easier to obtain while still having guardrails to prevent mirroring controversial ­proposals in Scotland that would have ­removed doctors from the process ­altogether.

The plans include ditching a panel of doctors and lawyers that approve ­gender recognition certificates, the document allowing transgender people to have their affirmed gender legally recognised, and only requiring one doctor to be involved in the process.

The Times understands that one option under consideration is that the doctor could be a GP. Labour would ­also ­remove the ability of a spouse to object to the change. A source said the party wanted to make the process “less medicalised” but added that the plans would retain the involvement of a doctor and would not allow people to self-identify in order to obtain legal changes.

They said it had not yet been decided whether the medical professional would be a GP or a gender specialist, with the issue likely to go to consultation if the party wins the next election.

The discussions centre on concerns that if the single doctor was a specialist, a GP would still need to make the ­referral, therefore retaining the two-step process that Labour wants to drop."

Labour plans to simplify ‘dehumanising’ gender change process

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/604c739c-70b7-4819-866f-370ae67da6ab?shareToken=2a1dede2a48c5ec7388167f16bdd6cbb

I can’t see that having any impact on the vast majority of voting decisions.

Of course you can’t. Neither can Starmer et al.

Meh. We trust GPs to do all sorts of things, this is not an issue as far as I'm concerned. Far better use of tax payer money and scarce resources than having a panel.

It is a very vague article too, very along the lines of the culture wars the Tories want us to care about.

"The Times understands that one option under consideration is that the doctor could be a GP. Labour would ­also ­remove the ability of a spouse to object to the change. A source said the party wanted to make the process “less medicalised” but added that the plans would retain the involvement of a doctor and would not allow people to self-identify in order to obtain legal changes.

This "source" is clearly not being specific which is enabling rumours - less medicalised could mean stopping the surgeries that have surged under the Tories and be more in line with the Cass report.

It’s not exactly news. This has been Labour’s policy for ages.

I can't see that policy as having been announced anywhere. In fact all it does seem to indicate is that they've been given a range of options to review & consider.

Certainly didn't have an impact on the local elections. How many seats did the Party Of Women take?

There are a few threads running today trying to predict doom and gloom for a Labour government. I guess the people making those predictions have been asleep for 14 years...

Oh dear. Guess Labour won’t be such a landslide win after all

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49455-voting-intention-con-20-lab-47-15-16-may-2024

The local elections are different to the general election. We all know that.

But anyway, it’s not my panic to have. Labour have been warned (by their own members). If they fail to get a majority, this will be why. But they’re used to it now. Learned Helplessness I guess. 🤷‍♀️

So do you think all the polls and all the bookies are wrong@Greengablesfables ?

No. They’ve collected their data, I have faith they’ve collected and analysed it in a competent fashion.
How predictable it is for the real thing, one never really knows.

Has there ever been an example of polls showing such a massive lead to be wrong?

If the polls were predicting Labour to have a lead of less than 10%, then I'd agree that victory was not in the bag. But a 25%+ lead?

But why are they ludicrous? As pointed out, using private facilities is hardly novel and it's worked fine previously.

If they fail to get a majority, this will be why.

It won’t. If they fail to get a majority it will be because something catastrophic happens to them or something miraculous happens to the Tories. It certainly won’t be on an issue that barely registers on most people’s radar.

I think it will be surprising to see how many GC women and allies hold their noses on this issue to vote Labour (or alternative party in their area). The alternative is to watch the country continue to be asset stripped, vulnerable people demonised, poverty increase with the biggest effect on women and children……etc etc.

It is important to some people and I agree it should be (not debating that here, just for clarification) but it’s a luxury belief for me now and not one I can hang my vote on. The Tories don’t mean what they say about it anyway and I’d rather tackle the issue with Labour than fall for yet another empty Tory promise.

I think it balances out. There are people holding their nose to vote Labour who are very much in favour or greater liberalisation of things such as gender recognition and who feel that Labour have jumped (well hitched a lift on) that aspect of the Culture Wars (MN is unlikely to follow these people on Twitter but they very much exist) and/or who are very concerned about climate. There are also more left wing Labour voters being relied on to hold their nose. There is , with that one (and Gaza), a certain complacency from Labour that there isn't an alternative and the left wing want, above all, to GTTO.

All the above applies to plenty of voters who might well actually have voted Green in the locals.

Look at all those who suggested Sadiq Khan was going to lose.

What a poor article. I'd be embarrassed to post that as proof of anything negative.

“We believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect,” she said. “We want to see the process for gender recognition modernised, while protecting single sex spaces for biological women. This means stripping out the futile and dehumanising parts of the process for obtaining a gender ­recognition certificate, while retaining important safeguards.”

Naughty labour eh? Committing to protecting single sex places and treating people with dignity and respect.

Re the NHS, the way I look at it, if Labour get in they will have 2 options.

1. use private facilities to tackle the backlog while they address underlying issues.
2. allow the backlog to continue growing while they continually firefight and have no resources left to tackle underlying issues.