The Phillip Lee defection and the Lib Dems

[RedToothBrush]

Jessica elgot@jessicaelgot
The chair of the LGBT Lib Dems has resigned in protest of Philip Lee's acceptance into the party

This is Jennie Rigg.

They've just posted their resignation from the party.

What a shame.

Also the fuckwitted Radical Association have gone into complete meltdown.

Radical Association @radicalassoc
Fundamentally Philip Lee isn't a liberal and we are disappointed that he has been allowed to join the Lib Dems - a move that has already caused resignations of senior & long standing voices within our movement.

This is not in any way a good day for liberalism in the UK.

We will be considering our further response to this; we believe we were right to oppose Lee joining, and will consider ways to officially express that in the coming weeks. We are very sorry and sad to see resignations of great liberals occurring as a result of today.

We will be considering our further response to this; we believe we were right to oppose Lee joining, and will consider ways to officially express that in the coming weeks. We are very sorry and sad to see resignations of great liberals occurring as a result of today.

If you know the back history of this, then the radical association don't understand what liberalism is and are utter fuckwits but hold a substantial amount of influence in the party.

Jennie Rigg going is interesting. And I think having another MP is going to outweigh any amount of wailing this lot are going to do.

Here's Jennie Rigg:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7424039/Top-Lib-Dem-LGBT-campaigner-QUITS-party-took-Tory-defector-Phillip-Lee.html

Apologies for linking to the Daily Wail.

Does this mean Aimee will now join the Labour Party? Are the Labour Party stupid enough to take her?

(My guess: Yes and yes.)

Arnold I don't think, politically, that Tim Farron was against homosexuality. He was a devout Christian but as I understand it, always voted in favour of things like gay marriage, because he agreed with equality in law.

Are the Labour Party stupid enough to take her?

If we're actually in a place where you've got to seriously ask the question, I think they are, yes!

Party line is that they accept Lee's controversial 2014 position on HIV was from a public health position so thats OK and not homophobic.

Which is something of a slap in the face for Gender Criticals with concerns about health ethics and experimentation on children. But there you go...

Sheila Ritchie @ europesheila
#PhillipLee sorry it took me so long to post this. We’ve not handled it well, but diligence HAS been done.

But we should be welcoming Phillip Lee into the Party.

Of course this statement should be widely circulated and questions raised about double standards going on.

Fuckwits.

Honestly, total fuckwits.

I also think Labour are stupid enough to take AC.

The Lib Dems have not been great for women - think of the way they dealt with Lord Renard and the number of women selected to MPs or appointed as life peers. This left a vacuum for a clique of aggressive members (and their hangers on like Lyn Featherstone) to become very influential. As was discussed on the other thread about Boris Johnson, these aspects are very under reported.

Settling in with popcorn.

But yay, an LGBT committee consisting of 11 biological males and one woman in a relationship with a man. So diverse. So representative.

How long before Challenor falls out with Labour, and decides the Tories are the one true faith? Anyone interested in opening a book?

CassianAndor, I was largely being snarky in my previous post, however recalling Tim Farron's existence led me to having a wee google around his thoughtsd and voting patterns on the issue, apparently in 2018, he expressed regret over his previous assertions that he didn't consider homosexual sex to be sinful, saying he felt under pressure from his party which led him to "foolishly and wrongly" make a statement "that was not right".

I also found this snippet Former head of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, Chris Cooke, made unsubstantiated complaints to the party about Farron's personal conduct when "drunk", and admitted that he "made up a story to cause trouble" following his suspension over Twitter comments directed at Conservative MP Anna Soubry.

LGBT LibDems seem to be mad as a box of frogs.

(quotes from Wikipedia so make of them what you will)

RedToothBrush, I'm probably being thick here but I'm not following how Party line is that they accept Lee's controversial 2014 position on HIV was from a public health position so thats OK and not homophobic. relates to Which is something of a slap in the face for Gender Criticals with concerns about health ethics and experimentation on children. But there you go...

RedToothBrush That statement - just wow, the complete hypocrisy of it. Clutching at straws but maybe the scent of political power might be having an effect.

Lee is allowed to have a controversial position on HIV because he is article and comes at it from a public health pov. His position is very nuanced that doesn't come across well in quotes apparently. Thus it's deemed not homophobic.

Compare with women concerned about RoGD and cases like the Webberely's and how no debate is official party policy. There is no nuauce allowed. Everything is automatically transphobic by default.

It's striking how a male doctor who is important and has status valuable to the party is allowed nuauce but ordinary women arent. Its very clear to see they aren't valued.

The Greens ("we're all about equality") have similar numbers of biological males on their own LGBT committee.

They far outstrip the number of women.

Their solution to this is for a lot of them to self identify as non-male.

And the Green Party LGBT committee was instrumental in helping David and Aimee Challenor to get an injunction against Andy Healey for speaking about the safeguarding risks of self-ID. David Challenor was later convicted for the rape and torture of a 10 year old girl. David Challenor identified as a young girl while he carried out the torture and rape.

It's striking how a male doctor who is important and has status valuable to the party is allowed nuauce but ordinary women arent. Its very clear to see they aren't valued.

Yes! Absolutely RedToothBrush. I have just been reading up his stance on LBBT rights and HIV and immigration status. An odd stance for the Lib Dems as I assume he will lose the seat in an election.

Thank you RedToothBrush, yes you are correct, there is a glaring double standard.

Was being slow, I need more coffee.

See I'm kind of annoyed by this whole 'But this is unacceptable because this person doesn't support/like X' when they've done something laudable. You can (and I do) disagree with Lee's unsupportive stance for LGBTQ, but that doesn't mean he can't or shouldn't join the Lib Dems though Rigg is welcome to step down if she feels that way.

It just irks me that politics is getting so divisive and identity lead that someone has to be done down if the rest of their politics isn't 'up to scratch'. If the Tory rebels do succeed in preventing a No Deal Brexit, you'll get people complaining about how they've voted on other things as if it was totally unacceptable to take a stand on Brexit when they don't support other things they consider right. The fact is none of them is taking a stand to get across a message about anything other than Brexit, they don't stand to gain power (in fact, to lose it) by doing so, so frankly whatever their other politics, I am grateful to them for taking a stand against Boris, but I'm just waiting for a bunch of people to slag them off and say they're worthless because of other things.

Sorry, this probably doesn't make sense to anyone except me.

Echobelly, get used to it. It's the culture war. Its here to stay and will get worse.

sorry, busy lunchhour here:

Jennie Rigg is a transwoman ?

No way will O'C or Sarah Brown be resigning in protest at Lee's inclusion.

Sarah Brown has in fact resigned today: inews.co.uk/news/lib-dem-philip-lee-tory-joining-party-lgbt-chair-quits-protest/

sarah brown has resigned! I haveto say this is great news for the party. I'd imagine women in the lib dems will now be called "terfs" a lot less often - we might even be able to discuss gender self id...

Yes good news all round unless they go for labour....

He is amazing - all crumbles before him!

Does he need to meet the person that was advising Layla Moran etc?

Really surprised at Brown resigning. Brown is not one to give up power.

From the article, Brown states: "I'm not out to nuke my bridges here, but I felt I had to do this, and I needed to explain why. My accommodation for Bournemouth is already booked, so I'll be there anyway, just not in the conference venue".

Sounds like someone who wants to be "persuaded" back in. And will use their presence/not presence at conference to engineer just that.

Zoe O' Connell is one of Brown's partners, so Brown will still be pulling the strings.

Sarah Brown official flounce statement
m.facebook.com/SarahOnAMountain/posts/10156971320939230

Rather than realise they needed to fix this, the parliamentary party doubled down and closed ranks.

This is symptomatic of the way the LGBT+ branch of the party has been treated for years, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Unlike other diversity strands, we didn't receive funding from the central party. It was a constant bugbear that the party seemed to regard us as a body that followed them round cleaning up messes they made when they did something that affected LGBT+ policy without consulting with us first, and thereby getting it wrong.

Every time this would happen, we'd meet behind closed doors with them, express our frustration, they'd promise to do better next time, and then not do better.

And now we lost our chair, one of the most passionate and principled liberals I know. I was going to stay, even after that, but instead of responding with reflection to what had happened, the parliamentary party closed ranks around Lee.

I give them a couple of weeks top. Once they've got attention and ego massaged.