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AIBU?

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Original poster

General election tomorrow - who do you vote for?

534 replies

IaminRome · 15/11/2022 19:12

I'm so sick of this government and reading a lot of the posts on here, it feels like on the one hand, so are lots of people, but there are also lots of other people who are very sceptical about labour or lib dem or greens. Added to which, there are so many issues at the moment, I know there's a lot of GC and what makes a woman, that is particularly important at the moment, and cost of living, private rentals, the environment, etc etc

So knowing what you know about the parties, if there was a general election tomorrow, who would you vote for..

YABU - Tories
YANBU - Labour
Comment for a third option

I used to be green, but I'm so not sure any more. So I think I'd vote labour, to stand best chance of keeping Tories out. (What I'd really like to vote for is a more representative government)

OP posts:
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8
CabernetSauvignon · 30/05/2023 12:59

AnarchoTyrannosaurus · 30/05/2023 08:33

Labour won't protect women's rights. I'm not voting for a party who doesn't know what a woman is. If the word woman loses its meaning then women have no rights or safeguards. The Tories started this. Labour will go even further with it. If anyone out there actually cares about women's rights and safeguards voting for labour would be a very self destructive move.

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But that is a deliberately blinkered view. On the one hand, you have party A that is likely to take away, for instance, maternity rights in the workplace and has never in 13 years done anything to protect gender identity rights. On the other hand, you have party B that won't take away maternity rights in the workplace and doesn't accept your views on gender identity. Are you really better off with A? And how do B's views on gender identity impinge on the preservation of maternity rights?

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 13:04

A political party "Not being the Tories" is a pretty big selling point for me I'm not gonna lie.

The Tories have had 13 years to fulfil all their manifesto promises and fix everything they care about.

And they still have another year or more to do something concrete to protect the rights of women.

But will they though?

When just repeating a slogan is apparently enough to get them votes?

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 13:11

CabernetSauvignon · 30/05/2023 12:52

Where do you get the idea that they have nothing to offer? Do you think that a commitment to protecting women's rights in the workplace and elsewhere, and preserving the right to termination of pregnancy - to say nothing of numerous other basic equality rights - is nothing?

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So they've committed to not changing the existing law in those areas, but redefining the group of people it applies to so that it becomes utterly meaningless? And also changing the law in relation to gender recognition to further erode women's rights, safety and dignity by forcing them to include men at all times?

Yeah, I think that's pretty much nothing.

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 13:11

CabernetSauvignon · 30/05/2023 12:59

But that is a deliberately blinkered view. On the one hand, you have party A that is likely to take away, for instance, maternity rights in the workplace and has never in 13 years done anything to protect gender identity rights. On the other hand, you have party B that won't take away maternity rights in the workplace and doesn't accept your views on gender identity. Are you really better off with A? And how do B's views on gender identity impinge on the preservation of maternity rights?

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Can we have some actual evidence that the Tories are planning to take away maternity rights?

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 13:14

pointythings · 30/05/2023 12:32

I would consider all single issue voters to be extreme, whether on Brexit, gender or anything else. It's a foolish and damaging way to interact with the privilege of having a democracy.

In the local elections up the road from my parents a Britain First candidate got over 100 votes just by repeating anti asylum seeker slogans.

This isn't an issue in the New Forest as far as I know.

And a Britain First local councillor is unlikely to be able to do anything to influence U.K. asylum seeker policy decided by the national Conservative Party government.

But still. He got votes.

Apparently there is a deprived bit with loads of long term illness and low educational attainment and he leafleted there.

The Tory got in.

TinyTopknot · 30/05/2023 13:16

CabernetSauvignon · 30/05/2023 12:59

But that is a deliberately blinkered view. On the one hand, you have party A that is likely to take away, for instance, maternity rights in the workplace and has never in 13 years done anything to protect gender identity rights. On the other hand, you have party B that won't take away maternity rights in the workplace and doesn't accept your views on gender identity. Are you really better off with A? And how do B's views on gender identity impinge on the preservation of maternity rights?

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'Gender identity' is not a real thing.

TinyTopknot · 30/05/2023 13:17

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 13:11

Can we have some actual evidence that the Tories are planning to take away maternity rights?

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They are not. It's idiots who get their politics from the States on twitter who think this.

TinyTopknot · 30/05/2023 13:20

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 12:07

I agree that women's rights is broader than just the trans issue.

But I simply don't trust a party which refuses to even name the group of people affected because it upsets some other people (who are not actually oppressed, just spoilt and self obsessed) to fight for any women's rights.

How are women supposed to make an equal pay claim if we no longer actually have words in the English language or the legal system to clearly distinguish between the two sexes?

Stella Creasy banged on incessantly about MPs not getting maternity leave and not being allowed to breastfeed in the House of Commons, and then she said that not only are trans women women, they are also female! Sorry, Stella, are you really saying that we don't need a word for the group of people who experience barriers to entering and progressing in politics because they don't get paid maternity leave and their employer doesn't facilitate them breastfeeding their very young babies? She knows exactly what a woman is and what female means when she personally finds herself on the sharp end of sex discrimination, but when it's only other women affected, such as female prisoners and female athletes and female rape survivors, trans women are female, apparently, and we don't need a word for the group of people who used to be female when the word female still meant the same thing in humans as it does in all other animals.

Ultimately, there is no good reason why Labour doesn't agree that women should have the language to clearly identify and describe themselves in a way that excludes the opposite sex, and to have our own single sex spaces and sports.

You can bleat, "But what about the evil nasty Tories!" all you like, but you cannot actually come up with a good reason why Labour supports the erasure of the female sex in law and language, and their sex based rights.

And I doubt we will see a "female" Labour leader until Eddie Izzard has got a gender recognition certificate.

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All of this.

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 13:24

@TinyTopknot
idiots that get their politics from the States on twitter

Wow you are really holding up your side of the argument well with this little gem of a post. just pathetic. Heres some US twitter-based politics for you.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women_workers_and_the_EU.pdf

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women_workers_and_the_EU.pdf

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 13:29

Abortion is kind of a big issue for the Conservatives and their donors.

You can tell by how many of them abstain on abortion votes.

SamW98 · 30/05/2023 14:00

For the first time in my 50 odd years on the planet I literally don’t have a clue as I don’t honestly think one of them is worth my vote and that we are fucked whoever gets in

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 14:04

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 13:29

Abortion is kind of a big issue for the Conservatives and their donors.

You can tell by how many of them abstain on abortion votes.

Other than the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland, when was the last time there was a Commons vote regarding abortion?

TinyTopknot · 30/05/2023 14:06

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 13:24

@TinyTopknot
idiots that get their politics from the States on twitter

Wow you are really holding up your side of the argument well with this little gem of a post. just pathetic. Heres some US twitter-based politics for you.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women_workers_and_the_EU.pdf

When was this written? A few years ago?

The TUC does not give a shit about women and is actively campaigning against them these days so perhaps not the gotcha you thought it was.

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1652362201955442693

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1652362201955442693

AnarchoTyrannosaurus · 30/05/2023 14:12

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 13:29

Abortion is kind of a big issue for the Conservatives and their donors.

You can tell by how many of them abstain on abortion votes.

In the UK?

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 14:12

Voting to continue the mifepristone after a telephone consultation that was brought in during the pandemic @MargotBamborough

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 14:13

Yes @AnarchoTyrannosaurus

MrsSkylerWhite · 30/05/2023 14:14

OhYouBadBadKitten · 26/05/2023 23:37

The party that will evict the Tories in my constituency.”

This. My first choice would labour but Lib Dem’s are more likely here I think.

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 14:18

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 13:24

@TinyTopknot
idiots that get their politics from the States on twitter

Wow you are really holding up your side of the argument well with this little gem of a post. just pathetic. Heres some US twitter-based politics for you.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women_workers_and_the_EU.pdf

Listen, I am as anti Brexit as anyone but do you seriously believe that only women living in EU countries have their right to equal pay protected? Or paid maternity leave?

Women in Canada might have to fight being struck off as a nurse for saying humans can't change sex, but they get far more generous maternity leave than women in most of the EU. In France, for example, it's 16 weeks.

Now yes, I did a massive eye roll and said "yeah right" when the Tories claimed that leaving the EU would allow the UK to give British people better rights and protections than they had before, or for us to have stronger environmental protection laws. I wasn't born yesterday.

But leaving the EU does not necessarily mean that the Tories propose to get rid of all the rights that are guaranteed to EU citizens under EU law. I will believe that they plan to ban abortion or abolish paid maternity leave when I actually see it in their manifesto, or proposals to that effect being debated in Parliament.

It is the height of dishonesty to claim on the one hand that the Tories plan to strip women of their existing rights despite zero evidence to the contrary, and then on the other hand to criticise women for not wanting to vote Labour on the basis that self ID might be in their as yet unpublished manifesto, when Labour have made it very clear on countless occasions that this is something they support and plan to introduce.

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 14:19

@TinyTopknot
Just amazing how you are dismissing a well put together, well researched, relevant and still very current analysis of why brexit is a threat to women’s workers rights.

It really shows how deep you have dug your trench and that you are prepared to die in it.

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 14:19

And abortion clinic buffer zones.

That was last year wasn't it?

And plenty of Tories either abstained or voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.

Notably the Minister for Women Maria Caulfield.

Blossomtoes · 30/05/2023 14:20

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 14:14

when was the last time there was a Commons vote regarding abortion?

3 in the last 5 years.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-leadership-race-abortion-b2123205.html

So there we are. An almost blanket refusal to support women’s rights but it’s fine because they say they know what a woman is 🙄

TheHoover · 30/05/2023 14:21

I know, sigh.
I’ll just get back on twitter i think

MargotBamborough · 30/05/2023 14:23

verdantverdure · 30/05/2023 14:19

And abortion clinic buffer zones.

That was last year wasn't it?

And plenty of Tories either abstained or voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.

Notably the Minister for Women Maria Caulfield.

The Tories have very little influence over devolved matters in Northern Ireland, where they have never been in power and never will be. Regardless of how individual MPs voted, decriminalising abortion in Northern Ireland was done on the Tories' watch, not Labour's. As was legalising same sex marriage.