To find it hilarious Labour claim to be the progressive party when they’ve only ever elected white men for leader

[BooToYouHalloween]

We now have the fourth elected (by the party) female Conservative leader. She is also the first black female leader and second person of colour.

Whereas the Labour Party have never voted in a woman or person of colour to be leader in their history. (Acting leader doesn’t count.) And yet people think they’re the more progressive party. I genuinely find it funny.

How on earth can you declare that. Hoards of kids in state schools are self harming in various ways, attempting suicide, not in school, spiralling….

The numbers of kids who are school refusing is massive and growing. There is not the money for all to have private education funded by the state. There is plenty that can be done in schools to help some of these children if there was money.

There are a lot of children who even with the money, will not cope with mainstream.

My daughter is one of them.

Because it's my lived experience.

I mentioned it upthread.

This was pre-covid.

What he needed was a small state specialist provision for autism. It doesn't exist.

He wasn't only trying to kill himself he was thowing shoes at my head trying to crash my car when driving him there.

Some children REALLY can't be in mainstream school.

Having been appropriately educated he is now at university living away from home. If I'd have kept insisting he went where he couldn't be he or I would be dead.

Anyway this is a rather large derail by @M0ssGreen of the OP post about the fact that the Labour Party declares itself progressive despite never having a leader of colour or a female leader.

If she is going to come on and make it about schooling for autism with views that are ableist then those views are going to be robustly challenged.

The Labour Party would do well to look at their woman problem then the fact that Kemi has been voted leader would not be remarkable.

Except I didn’t but there you go.

Kemi is not progressive so the Tories can’t declare themselves in any way shape or form progressive .

I agree it’s time the Westminster Labour Party elected more diverse leaders - as has been pointed out the Welsh and Scottish Labour Parties are doing better with this. However diversity and progressiveness are not the same thing. Badenoch is not progressive in any way.
As regards Labour SEND policy, I don’t think it’s them ‘refusing’ to say what it is, and I’m not sure how a PP can have ‘constantly’ bombarded the Ed Sec for any length of time because she’s only been it fro a few months. The SEND policy will come with the Education Policy, which can now be written after the budget. The delay hasn’t been helpful, I agree.
As for blaming Labour for a policy before 2010 when the Tories were capable of changing it if they disagreed…that’s mad. And those who have children with funded independent places - as Badenoch thinks giving school transport is an unfair advantage to autistic children do you really think she’d continue funding those places?

Incredible failure of basic reading comprehension. Chef’s kiss.

Kemi is as much an “identity politics hire” as Thatcher was. I.e. - since you apparently struggle with reading comprehension - not at all.

Interesting how we have Kemi, Rachel, Kamala… and Starmer and Blair.

Until we address these problematic attitudes and the underlying misogyny that causes people to correctly address male politicians and not female ones, we may as well be led by Martians.

Also interesting that people discount not only the party leaders of the devolved nations but also the fact that both the Conservatives and Labour have had Jewish leaders. So it’s untrue to say that Labour in Westminster has never had a minority ethnic leader.

Maybe people should look at their own prejudices before lauding the fact that the Tories have just appointed an extremist to lead what’s left of their parliamentary party.

Mmm not sure I agree about the first name thing. There’s Boris, Rishi, Saddiq, Ken. Thatcher was always Thatcher. I don’t think anyone calls Theresa May “Theresa” over May or Diane Abbott “Diane” over Abbott.

As a rule I disapprove of people calling politicians by their first names. On this thread there’s a lot of it, almost exclusively the women. It’s worth asking why.

Also, I’d imagine Ms Badenoch would give short shrift to anyone being overly familiar with her! I think she’s appalling, but I doubt she suffers fools gladly.

I'm really shocked so many posters are minimising the issue.
same. there's a lot of 'whataboutery'. Yes a female leader doesn't automatically mean progressive values (or a good leader). Yes the devolved nations have (and do have) female labour leaders. Yes of course it's about the person not their gender. No I wouldn't want Labour to automatically put forward a female candidate for the next election to solve this (not least because atm the most likely person would be AR) even if they weren't the best person for the job.

But the point still stands - people are happy enough to point out that it's taken until 2024 for the US to even come close to electing a female president (and that is only after Biden stepped down, and who knows if there will actually be one until the 2030s or later), and how delayed this is compared to most countries and what that say about the American psyche. Yet if Labour had been in power throughout the last 50 years we wouldn't have had one either. When you get to the point that nearly all the other political parties in this country and most other countries have had a female leader it does start getting a bit suspect.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be disappointing and concerning that Labour have never had a female leader while simultaneously not meaning female leaders of other parties have been amazing. At least they've had the chance to be good/shit. That's the point.

people are happy enough to point out that it's taken until 2024 for the US to even come close to electing a female president (and that is only after Biden stepped down,

Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 but was beaten by Trump because of the electoral college system.

But she is a fool so. And re the first name thing, all I can say is Boris- another fool.

Again, I didn't request private. I requested specialist provision. Mainstream would never have coped with my daughter.

I could equally suggest you're being dramatic.

You’re so right OP! They have a such a progressive leader that doesn’t believe in maternity rights for women and thinks that 6 weeks is more than generous /excessive and that people should exercise more personal responsibility. They will use Kemi like they used Priti to bang on the immigration drum as a woman of colour and when it comes to fighting the next election I bet she will be conveniently replaced with a white male.

I don't think it's all that surprising a political party in a Northern European country would not have so far had a non-white leader. More than 80% of the country is white and it used to be far more.

I do think there are probably reasons related to their underlying ideology that the conservatives have seemed to get to these things first, especially women leaders. But I suspect it's not a straightforward metric by any stretch.

I'd rather neither party choose leaders based on race and sex.

Whilst I agree it is disappointing that Labour have never elected a woman leader, representation has its limits. Thatcher was no feminist. No point in having representation if that person is enacting policies that damage they groups of people they “represent”

So progressive that they think women are a feeling in men's heads, that children who don't conform to outdated sex stereotypes should be sterilised with powerful drugs before they're even old enough to understand, that gay conversion therapy is bad unless it involves a man claiming to be a lesbian and that women's bodies and babies should be bought and sold (surrogacy)
Yeah labour are so progressive that under their government that women will be left with no rights unless their women with penises

Well they’ll have maternity rights- something Kemi thinks has gone too far.

Such a good post. It really does stand out like a sore thumb and suggests Labour are paying lip service rather than a meaningful commitment to diversity.

Rosa moncton (sp) was a friend of princess Diana and her child was born with downs syndrome.

She did a beautiful and moving tv documentary on families supporting people with this condition and the people etc and others with Conditions.

At the time Gordon Brown was pm and David Cameron was shadow pm. She said we have two men in power with disabled children.. Let's hope for change.

Oe thing this thread shows is that a lot of the time we get the politicians we deserve.

KB has critisisized the way maternity benefits are set up, and the way there are legally created hierarchies around helping children in education.

She hasn't, in fact, said that kids with extra needs should not be educated or helped, and she specifically said that maternity pay is important for women.

But because it wasn't pitched to a 12 year old level of thinking people can't seem to understand that it's possible to be critical of policies while still thinking their purpose is important or needs to be accounted for in some way.

This is why we so often end up with shit leaders.

www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/the-national-autistic-society-has-responded-to-kem

Thankfully not everybody thinks the huge amount of people outraged by her comments have the intelligence of a 12 year old.

Yes, I've read this.

It doesn't change what she actually said though, does it.