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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be annoyed at Angela Eagle playing the 'woman' card

96 replies

Cguk81 · 12/07/2016 10:46

Apparently now is the time for Labour to have its first female leader. Surely she doesn't need to be playing the 'I'm a woman card' but should instead be focusing on her skills and talent, regardless of gender.

OP posts:
ThisPanCanCan · 12/07/2016 12:18

Thousands more have joined to vote for Corbyn, should there be another vote for party leader.

This is simply untrue as far as I am aware. I have rejoined the Party and one of my things to do is to vote against him in any ballot. Threads on here also reveal a fair few folk who have joined/re-joined as they don't wish the Party to be sacrificed for any individual. I also know two people in RL who have joined, intending to vote against JC. Momentum may in for a bit of a shock.

Having said all of that, the thought of voting for AE fills leads to the shaking of my own head as I contemplete it. (shakes own head).

GiddyOnZackHunt · 12/07/2016 12:34

This on the evidence of recent meetings I disagree. A lot of the new members have joined because they like Corbyn. Some of the £3 joiners are not as keen as they were but there are still new joiners who are coming in to support him.
Nobody's throwing other names up as leader though. Certainly not Angela Eagle.

Destinysdaughter · 12/07/2016 12:36

This made me laugh!

To be annoyed at Angela Eagle playing the 'woman' card
ThisPanCanCan · 12/07/2016 12:37

No, no new names. I have been entertaining thoughts of Deputy becoming Leader but Watson is cautious/cool about it.

waffilyversati1e · 12/07/2016 12:39

Is she allegedly not a woman then? do you mean "woman card"? If so I want one!

kesstrel · 12/07/2016 12:41

Giddy What meetings are you referring to? I don't think Labour members who are against Corbyn are terribly likely to come to a CLP meeting at the moment, if that's what you mean. I certainly wouldn't; I'd be too intimidated. And anyway, I believe the vast majority of party members never attend meetings.

kesstrel · 12/07/2016 12:44

By the way, the Guardian comments site is full of Corbyn supporters insisting that the brick through Eagle's window was thrown by an Eagle supporter, as part of the Conspiracy against Corbyn....Hmm

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 12/07/2016 12:46

on the evidence of recent meetings I disagree.

On the evidence of meetings I have attended I agree with thispan.

My CLP members voted overwhelmingly for him. They won't be doing again.

Also where is he?

Hours since Eagles office was bricked. She has had to cancel an event due to threats. Not a peep from him

He hasn't even congratulated Theresa May yet.

GiddyOnZackHunt · 12/07/2016 12:52

kess yes CLP meetings. There were indeed some newish members who did feel that Corbyn isn't working though and they were given a respectful hearing. They made good arguments and it was an interesting debate. Certainly most members don't go to meetings. I don't get along every time. I do get out and campaign though.

GiddyOnZackHunt · 12/07/2016 12:53

He's at the meeting of the NEC.

Cguk81 · 12/07/2016 13:47

Will need to watch the clip of Ruth Davidson. I think she is excellent even if I don't agree with what she says sometimes.

I agree with some of the previous posters that Eagle and her supporters seem to have a warped idea of how Labour voters are feeling towards Corbyn. I wasn't too keen on him immediately after the referendum as I felt he should have put himself out there more but over the past few weeks his stubbornness to stick his heels in and not quit have warmed me to him! Their plan to oust him on the back of Brexit looks set to backfire on them.

OP posts:
ThisPanCanCan · 12/07/2016 13:47

I thought he was in Brighton speaking to a union conference.

Cguk81 · 12/07/2016 13:52

Also where is he?
Why doesn't he put himself out there as much as others? Does he not like the media?
I do wonder if that will be his downfall...you can work like a trojan and be a wonderful politician but if you don't get out there and tell voters what you are thinking/doing and show face then they will start to think you aren't pulling your weight or that you don't care.

OP posts:
PigletWasPoohsFriend · 12/07/2016 13:53

Eagle and her supporters seem to have a warped idea of how Labour voters are feeling towards Corbyn.

No they don't.

Polls say they don't. Door knocking in marginal seats say they don't. MPs talking to their constituents say they don't

On the 'marches for Corbyn' where are the Labour posters? All you see is momentum/SWP/TUSC and StW.

Pan He cancelled to attend the NEC.

Lailalee · 12/07/2016 14:23

Utterly useless. There's no way she will rescue Labour. Not a chance!

Thymeout · 12/07/2016 14:31

A third of those who voted Lab in 2015 now say they would vote for a different party. Yesterday's Guardian had figures from union members in all the affiliated unions. A significant majority think Corbyn should go.

Op - the BBC and national press both complained that he refused interviews and platforms during the Referendum campaign. He's only comfortable preaching to the converted.

Brexit means a G.E. is v much on the cards, no matter what May says now. The Tories have only a small majority and if they lose support in their own ranks due to contentions Brexit proposals - v.likely - she will need an increased majority.

The PLP could see which way the wind would be blowing and want a new leader - an electable leader - asap.

Werkz · 12/07/2016 14:31

I was at a Labour Party meeting a week or so ago and it was painfully apparent that some members just don't seem to get the problem of the 'disaffected heartlands'. I've been banging on about this for years.

Labour went all internationalist and got hung up on being nice to everyone and forgot that their support base were actually more interested in having a job, an affordable roof over their head and a local community. And increasingly the men and women in naice suits with a degree and two homes are not making that happen.

It's not just you. I know Labour activists that actually go out canvassing (that is how you separate the serious folk from fluffies) that have been banging their heads against a brick wall for years over this. No one listen to them because the truth is 'inconvenient'. Street after street in what should be solid Labour households, all saying they will vote UKIP.

I had to stop myself laughing the other day when one of the pro-Corbyn fluffies I know claimed that a repudiation of clause IV would bring UKIP voters back to Labour. That is how deluded some of these people are.

The Labour party as it is now is screwed without a wholesale sea-change in the way it thinks, operates and recruits. It could be done, but it is highly unlikely. You'd need a Bob Crow type: a pro-brexit hardnut who will focus on defending working people in Britain and not get side-lined by fashionable "global" issues.

Unfortunately, the party has been taken over by middle-class pseudo-radical internationalists of one type or another who've never been inside a council house.

That said, what's becoming rather awkward is that the Tories are now on their second female leader, and Labour has never had one. Kinda rubs Labour's nose in equality, that. Wink

And don't think people don't notice. One of the greatest failures of the left is the notion that the "right wing press" controls working class minds, as though they just sit there like sheep being pumped full of propaganda.

It doesn't and they don't. There is such a thing as the "British street", just like the "Arab street", and a lot of political opinion is informed through information passed through social networks of tradesman, nurses, GP receptionists, dinner ladies, drivers, landlords, shop owners, post-masters etc. They see things, talk to their mates and families, they talk to their mates and families, who talk to their neighbours, and word gets around really fast. Of course, the upper middle-classes never experience any of this, so they don't realise it exists, and Labour doesn't realise it exists either -- because so few of their members are plugged into these networks.

Labour thinks it lives in a different country to the one it actually does, and that's why it will struggle to win back those traditional votes.

WallisSimpson11 · 12/07/2016 14:37

Labour died the day Ed Milliband was elected leader of the party. I remember that afternoon very well and could not believe what I was witnessing.
David Milliband will not come back (I highly doubt).

WallisSimpson11 · 12/07/2016 14:38

It's also very true- they DO NOT listen to the electorate- always deciding what they think is right when it is all wrong.

BakewellSliceAgain · 12/07/2016 14:52

Werks your post rang true for me.

MintJulip · 12/07/2016 15:36

werkz

What an excellent post.

If only we could get you to talk to the people in charge of Labour and try and talk some sense into them Grin

The Labour party as it is now is screwed without a wholesale sea-change in the way it thinks, operates and recruits. It could be done, but it is highly unlikely. You'd need a Bob Crow type: a pro-brexit hardnut who will focus on defending working people in Britain and not get side-lined by fashionable "global" issues

^^ This and

And don't think people don't notice. One of the greatest failures of the left is the notion that the "right wing press" controls working class minds, as though they just sit there like sheep being pumped full of propaganda.
Labour thinks it lives in a different country to the one it actually does, and that's why it will struggle to win back those traditional votes

This ^

Its why I find MN fascinating in that it does expose one to the sort or types that are holding labour back. You see on here irrefutable evidence laid before them and they ignore it and come back with the tired "forriner" line or the " daily mail" reader line. I think they are /have been totally left behind. If they think like what we see on here its little wonder.

I am a swing voter and I want a good opposition. I feel much of the old guard needs to go.

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 12/07/2016 15:58

I am a swing voter and I want a good opposition

Even Cameron admits that is needed.

Werkz · 12/07/2016 16:39

MintJulip

I tried for years to talk sense into them. Years. It's hopeless. The old guard used to listen (old Labour types), but most of them are retired or dead now and they've been replaced by younger people that I regard to be very similar to 1980s Yuppie types who only pass as Labour because they paint themselves with a veneer of "social justice."

No joke, I once went out for a drink with a young Labourite who is now very high up in the party machinery and this person was shocked that I ordered a pint of beer. This person had never come across a woman drinking a pint; it just didn't occur in their upper-middle-class social "Labour party" circle. This same person also joked that there was "an old boys and girls' network" siphoning privately-educated Oxbridge grads such as themselves into key jobs in the Labour terrain: into think tanks, as Spads and assistants etc ...

When I heard that, I was horrified.

Not that the young Corbynites are any better; they are just more arrogant and "radical". In my time at the heart of left-wing politics, the most "radical" people I met were always from public schools. I'd meet people in far-left groups, protesting for revolution, and ten to one, they'd have gone to somewhere like Harrow. I have always suspected that their motivations are more to do with rebelling against the values of their parents and their fellow classmates than anything else. Problem is ... these people are dangerous. They are not held back by ordinary people's concerns about money, jobs or housing (because their parents will always keep them alright) so they are free to cause havoc with their entryism.

There are a lot of reasons why what has happened to Labour has occurred, but really it goes back to the 70s and the infiltration of Labour by upper-middle-class pseudo-intellectual Marxists who'd actually lived lives of significant privilege, compared to everyone else in Britain. Those Marxists didn't realise that Labour was more a party of old Methodism than Marxism, and, as such, they misunderstood traditional voters, couldn't speak to them in a language they understood, and then couldn't understand why nearly a third of working class Brits voted for Thatcher in '79.

They still don't understand it today. They scrabble around, talking about "blue Labour" and "red Tories", and sometimes, if you are lucky, you'll get someone blather on about "false consciousness". You can also play "right wing press" bingo -- once you've stopped tearing your hair out, that is.

I feel sorry for the good souls still in the fight, but even a lot of them are aging now. I truly don't know what Labour as a party is anymore, but I sure as hell know they don't represent ordinary working people in Labour heartlands.

I made a mistake in my earlier post. I said "repudiate" clause iv when I meant "reinstate". Just exactly how nationalisation would benefit a UKIP-voting self-employed plumber, I have no idea.

MangoMoon · 12/07/2016 16:54

Am also nodding along enthusiastically to your posts Werkz.

It would be no bad thing if the party actually imploded altogether & started over as what it originally was - socially minded & representing the working classes.

I agree too about the most 'radical' types having their flights of fancy enabled due to the safety net of mummy & daddy.

What do ordinary people want?
A job in a safe environment which pays enough to keep them & their family housed, fed, clothed & warm, with a bit extra for luxuries.

They don't want to be nursemaided by the state with handouts that keep them beholden to their benefactors.
It's demeaning and demoralising.

GiddyOnZackHunt · 12/07/2016 16:55

Werkz yes. Absolutely.
Methodist rather than Marxist was exactly what was going on. My family exactly apart from those that were Baptists :)