Conservative landslide - how are we feeling as feminists?

[Cwenthryth]

I feel very mixed this morning. So worried about what this means for public services, policing, NHS, social care, mental health services, housing, in-work poverty... all of which disproportionately affects women, either as those needing these services or picking up the pieces when dependents cannot access what they need. We now have an openly misogynist prime minister (we did before, but now he has a secure mandate), who won’t even acknowledge all of his children whilst slagging off single mothers, and has had the police called out due to neighbours fearing for the safety of his partner from what they could hear through the wall.

But there’s a tiny silver lining of it seeming that it seems very unlikely that self-ID would be brought in under this government, at least in the form the Lib Dems were touting for, so we are probably more secure on retaining sex-based rights than we would have been with any other result.

To be honest it’s not really much comfort to me right now.

Great post Lang

There is a thread elsewhere on MN where people are posting, apparently quite seriously, that they will now stop donating to food banks because poor people voted tory so fuck em.

I won't link because posters there have made it clear they don't want any political arguments on their thread - it's a 'support thread' for Corbyn supporters who are obviously the real victims in all this.

Lisa M was dead right - the current left are a group of people who identify as the representatives of the working class. So when the working class say 'fuck off, you don't represent us' then obviously the working class must have it wrong. Because we must respect people's identities.

I am so very, very angry at Momentum and at the Labour party for allowing this entryism to happen. I am so angry at the lack of proper introspection even now in some quarters. Some people on the left seem to believe it is the electorate who should resign.

Labour lost because they are shit. We now have Johnson in charge with a huge majority and we have no effective opposition. That is terrifying.

I am so angry at the lack of proper introspection even now in some quarters. Some people on the left seem to believe it is the electorate who should resign...

Pencils I saw that thread, it’s quite incredible. The current Labour Party is convinced of its moral superiority. This moral certainty is accompanied by vitriolic abuse of any dissenter. I understand why you’re concerned about the lack of introspection. If Labour aren’t able to analyse why they have lost so catastrophically, without calling voters thick racists, they won’t be able to extricate themselves from this quagmire.

I love you, Lang

Rightbackatcha! Although why I bother, I don't know! Very next post, more of the same.

lang is ok. 🙋‍♀️

Lisa M was dead right - the current left are a group of people who identify as the representatives of the working class. So when the working class say 'fuck off, you don't represent us' then obviously the working class must have it wrong. Because we must respect people's identities.

I will love Lisa forever for giving me the sentence I identify as your representation. Bang fucking (cos I can't stop swearing when I talk about these fools) on.

lang is ok

I'd never swear at you, lovely.

Yep. I love you too Lang!

Lisa Nandy in the Mirror yesterday - compare and contrast to say, Kinnock Jnr who is just laying into Corbyn on Twitter:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/lisa-nandy-labour-become-rooted-21094144.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Johnson may well be seen a reprobate; Corbyn, however, is viewed (by many, I suspect) as an anti-Western anti-Semitic terrorist sympathiser.

McDonnell's Magic Money Tree was just laughable. You can't help the poorest once you've bankrupted the country.

Owen Jones and Ash Sarkar's Twitter are beyond belief today. No attempt to take any responsibility.

This blaming the electorate makes me despair even more than the result. It's like it's the left who now believe in the idea of 'the deserving poor'.

McDonnell's just resigned as Shadow Chancellor. Looks like he's the only one that gets it. His face when he saw the exit poll results said it all - he was ashen.

McDonnell's just resigned as Shadow Chancellor. Looks like he's the only one that gets it. His face when he saw the exit poll results said it all - he was ashen.

I am sure he gets it and I'm glad he's taking responsibility. He's a materialist leftist who knowingly put his campaigning eggs in the posh liberal activist basket. Of anyone, he should have known.

Yep, I respect him for accepting responsibility too.

He's shown integrity. He had plenty of us telling him on the web chat telling him we couldn't vote for labour because of XYZ. I wonder if what we said will now start to hit home and filter down. Doubt it but it would be nice.

Someone on another thread talked about the Manichean tendency of the far left - the tendency to cast everything in moral terms of good and evil. Hence posts on here in all seriousness likening Tories to Nazis.

I wish I could get across to them that none of us have a crystal ball - we all make political decisions based on a mixture of our (imperfect) knowledge of the facts, historical analogies (which can be good ones or very poor ones), geographical analogies (look what's happening in Venezuela under Marxism, look what's happening in XYZ European country with the resurgence of the far right...), past experience in our own lives which give us a tendency to weight different issues as the most important ones for us.

It is therefore a perfectly defensible, mainstream political opinion to say "yes, I can see our welfare state is currently screwed and people are suffering under universal credit, but frankly, if Labour tank the economy, I won't have a job and neither will a lot of other tax payers, which will obviously hurt us directly, but also indirectly make things even worse for those on universal credit."

You may think the factual analysis is wrong (that Labour's policies wouldn't tank the economy - and there's a lot of analysis of other European countries' spending which suggests that what they were proposing wasn't as extremely radical as some bits of the press made it out to be). You may disagree with the weighting (maybe you think a few firms going under is a price worth paying for a better welfare state - politics is full of messy choices like this). But it doesn't mean that people who have made this judgement call based on their understanding of the information available are evil, kitten drowning, puppy eating monsters. It certainly doesn't make them Nazis.

But calling them Nazis will destroy any chance you had of persuading them that their analysis was wrong and lose you their votes.

I agree with this. Feminists only seem to care about rich women and their petty little nonsense

Offensive nonsense. Some women here have been campaigning and fighting for the rights of disempowered people for decades, in many cases.

What have you been doing? Do you think that just putting a tick in a box is all you have to do?

Owen Jones and Ash Sarkar's Twitter are beyond belief today. No attempt to take any responsibility

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.......

If people such as these are the future of the Labour party then it is in big trouble. I think Momentum really should form its own party - leaving the Labour party decide what its future will look like. These people hate most Labour party members too.

I am sure he gets it and I'm glad he's taking responsibility. He's a materialist leftist who knowingly put his campaigning eggs in the posh liberal activist basket. Of anyone, he should have known

Yes, and I suspect he did know.......such a shame. He's a good man and a very capable politician and economist.

Labour has never recovered in Scotland where it also used to take long-standing voters for granted. What would it have to do to get those voters back? Or is it a case that because much of the legislation is devolved, Scottish voters are relatively disengaged with Westminster, in the way I am about Brussels?

Scottish voters are relatively disengaged with Westminster, in the way I am about Brussels

Westminster is a world away from most people in the country, let alone in Scotland. Westminster has done nothing for many of our communities for decades.

I dont suppose Owen etc could take responsibility to do that they would have to abandon the code they live by. Very hard to do I imagine.

You're talking to a forum full of intelligent and politically engaged women. Half-arsed scoldings from a position of obvious ignorance cuts no mustard hereabouts.

I thought you didn’t approve of talking down to people.

I feel relieved and cautiously optimistic.

Relieved the Brexit issue is resolved, cautiously optimistic that we have the best party in place to build a strong economy and country which can raise outcomes for all, and hopeful we have the party most likely to ditch self ID.

I care as much about housing and hungry children as most people do, I just don't think that excessive centralised spending is the best route to address these issues.

The trope that only Labour votes are nice and caring, and this then gives them the right to attack and name call others, has surely been so exposed now??
It's the same mode of operandi as the TRAs.