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.

Oh and I’m also not forgetting Brown s pension raid which drove private final salary pensions to close down, whilst the public pensions are guaranteed by taxpayers.

what about the theft of 50s women’s pensions?

There's something particularly unfair about pensions being fucked with. Maxwell nicking all that money, big employers going bust, the 50s women and the closure of all the final salary schemes.
It's ok for the big man to change an agreement if it doesn't suit him, but we could never do likewise.
Imagine the old endowment mortgage type of scenario, except the householder pays nothing each month. A promise is made to pay the bank at the end. Then the householder decides nah, I'll pay 60% instead. Can you see the bank standing for that?
Or people deciding not to pay taxes because it didn't suit the family budget?
Or only paying for half the shopping? We couldn't move the goalposts like that.

Things like that happening make people lose faith in any government, and the system of government. Same with food shortages or power blackouts or rampant inflation. People lose faith.

Ironically the signs TPTB were planning to ignore the referendum result (same goalpost moving) made people more politically motivated not less, because there was a chance to influence it. Pension theft was never on the table to be discussed, it was just done by those who thought they knew best.

whilst the public pensions are guaranteed by taxpayers
They've been fucked with too. I am not public sector but I know the police and the home office have had theirs changed.
Plus the people I know in the public sector earn considerably less than their private sector equivalents so it's swings and roundabouts. There are well paid seemingly pointless civil service jobs for the right kind of bloke/ woke woman, but likewise there are even better paid private sector jobs for the right kind of bloke/woke woman too.

Just coming back to this thread.

Does anyone else find Momentum quite scary? The utter convection that they are RIGHT and that anyone who disagrees is not only wrong but morally defective... overlaid by an undercurrent of threats and coercion. But then a very positive “solidarity, comrades!” sheen on top.

I know the police force has been politicised. I hope the military has not and will not be.

Sorry that sounded more ominous than intended

And hopefully the perception of Momentum online is not really accurate as regards their real life presence.

No, I’m with you there 2B. It’s the complete inability to countenance that anyone else might have a valid point, or that the reason that other people might have come to different conclusions on an issue, is down to anything other than everyone else is evil and wants bad things. It’s like talking to a brainwashed person or a computer program, you know there’s little point in discussion, and they defeat their own arguments to anyone observing the conversation, but they can’t see it themselves.

On another thread a there are posts saying the northern thing is not an issue.

I’d like to see that criteria assessed and if they don’t have it put one in that asks can the new Labour leader stand up to a harsh media? Really think about how they come across and what their weaknesses are.

As a southerner who relocated up North 12 years ago, I think another Southern based MP would be a PR disaster.

DuMonde who do you think could win?

Or has best chance of...

Dunno.
Early days.

Nandy gets the North/South divide but has kept quiet the last few years so I don’t know if she has enough internal party support?

I think we are potentially stuck with a problem similar to the one the US democrats are facing - those selected by the party membership aren’t necessarily the best ones to actually win the votes of the wider electorate.

I presume the Corbyn supporting membership will support Rebecca Long Bailey (rumoured to be considering running a duo ticket with Keir Starmer for deputy) but I think Nandy will be more popular with the wider voters.

I’m thinking of it a bit like Guess Who, where flipping the tiles down leaves the first choice standing.

The current Corbyn membership won’t want a leader who voted for the Iraq war, and the long standing members won’t want anyone too newly elected or too associated with Momentum.

Northerners won’t want a southerner, and anyone staunch remain will be seen as a traitor by the voters who Labour desperately need back.

Nandy had some issues with expenses but I don’t know if that was noticed much outside of Manchester? (She likes first class, basically).

I agree with all that especially this those selected by the party membership aren’t necessarily the best ones to actually win the votes of the wider electorate.
That is a big problem.

For my penance I just googled who will win Labour race and got an article on odds in a tabloid. Red the comments they are all hated, with an extra layer of misogyny on top. It’s a tough gig.

Oh and I’m also not forgetting Brown s pension raid which drove private final salary pensions to close down, whilst the public pensions are guaranteed by taxpayers.

Public pensions are only guaranteed up to a point. Final salary schemes closed to new entrants about a decade ago, even those still in them have had their terms changed for the worse. Also please remember that public sector workers are also taxpayers, not some breed apart.

It’s a poison chalice, definitely. Whoever wins will need to be able to make a really big separation between bone and family life and work - keep the personal life self esteem intact but not have a public rhino hide that prevents you hearing the electorate.

Whoever wins probably won’t fight a GE (presuming that we get a full five years) but will do 4 years and be replaced with a fresher face for the final year.

Those considering it, especially the young ones, will be deciding if they are better hanging on for 4 years (of course, you’ll only want to risk that if you have a sizeable majority that means you are unlikely to lose your seat during the GE with you as a new leader).

On the face of things, I like RLB and Lisa Nandy - that might change with more info, but what young (by politician standards!) woman wants to wade into this quagmire of shit? They are both 40 with one child, LN has been MP one term longer but RLB has had more shadow cabinet experience. I don’t know how old RLB’s son is, but becoming leader will mean potentially choosing between a second child and career (they may both have already made that choice, of course, but these are the general issues facing 40 year old women today).

LN was part of the ‘chicken coup’ (rumoured to be an organiser and a definite ally of Owen Smith at the time) and RLB was instrumental in getting Corbyn nominated for the leadership contest in the first place, so they both have history that could tip members either way.

As far as I know (and I live in Greater Manchester so do have friends in both CLPs) they are both decent constituency MPs. Accessible and sympathetic, hardworking.

Lisa will do well to refuse any factional endorsement, I reckon, where RLB will be endorsed by Momentum whether she wants it or not.

Momentum don’t have great numbers but they do seem to be good at organising for internal membership votes. I think great swathes of the membership don’t bother to vote in say, NEC stuff at all. The other organising factions don’t seem to have had much success of late, but this is a new landscape for everyone. Lots of new post GE members, reportedly.

I’m sure WPUK will have good, solid analysis, and no Labour MP who survived this bloodbath of an election can still believe that woke is the way to win, surely?

I'm concerned about the potential for a glass cliff situation. I don't think a new leader is going to lead Labour to victory unless they can get to grips with Momentum and defuse it, as Kinnock had to with Militant and for which he was forever tainted. Someone new and clean and fresh (Blair) was then able to pick up the baton and win. It took 18 years for Labour to get back after 1979. I hope it won't be as long this time but I'm braced for another 10 years of Tory rule while Momentum and the Corbyn legacy are dismantled and I'm not sure I want to see a promising female candidate sacrifice herself to the rebuilding phase. Can't help feeling that the men got us into this and the men need to get us out.

It's a bit like the situation with May: no male politician of any stature really wanted the job because they all knew it was going to be horrible and almost certainly doomed to failure and they didn't want to be associated with it. So they let a woman do it. Now of course they're all routinely vilifying her as the worst prime minister in British history while BJ bases his exit strategy on the deal she carved out.

I would be really sorry to see a promising female politician take the post for a term or two, take on the tough job of reforming the party and be distrusted for it (as Kinnock was for what he did) and then removed so that a man could reap the rewards of her work.

I speak, obviously, as someone looking for a more centrist Labour party. I canvassed for Labour for three weeks prior to the election and I saw very little support among long-time Labour voters for a return to the hard-left. I had people who planned to vote Labour telling me that actually they hoped the Tories would win. My constituency held onto our Labour MP despite Corbyn.

And we had Smith between Kinnock and Blair so it might be an even longer journey back to electability. I hope not.

I think we should invest in training our own workforce and not rely on immigration ( and I am my self a reluctant immigrant). But many people immigrate because there are jobs to be had. These are jobs that British government has not invested in training British workforce for because it is cheaper to use immigration, in effect other countries’ tax money. In an ideal world this is ok as those countries will get some of our workforce but we don’t live in an stable world.

Great post, MagnificentDelurker. Glad to see we share similar views on this point. :)
The urgency for immigration is precisely because successive UK governments are failing to invest in the British population in terms of training and retaining them, especially in healthcare.

It's a bit like the situation with May: no male politician of any stature really wanted the job because they all knew it was going to be horrible and almost certainly doomed to failure and they didn't want to be associated with it. So they let a woman do it. Now of course they're all routinely vilifying her as the worst prime minister in British history while BJ bases his exit strategy on the deal she carved out.

Well said.

The urgency for immigration is precisely because successive UK governments are failing to invest in the British population in terms of training and retaining them, especially in healthcare.

It's cheaper. Same way hiring foreign tradesmen is cheaper. No government or corporation cares about the effect of stripping talent from poorer nations who can't afford to lose their doctors.
It's both a lack of respect for British people and short-termism. I say that as the child of a non-EU NHS doctor immigrant.

It's cheaper.

Oh absolutely, but that's the sort of point that citizens should be challenging political parties on during elections. If they want our votes, they have to guarantee they will have long-term plans to invest in British citizens.

Governments are not private households no matter what guff they spout at us about public debt and spending. A country like the UK with its sovereign currency can absolutely afford to invest in its citizens, and that is one of the main roles of governments around the world.

"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"

Excuse me. Im on that thread and its a support thread not a Corbyn fangirling thread. And please post the rest of it. There are people posting on there that they can no longer AFFORD to give to food banks now because they are looking into private health insurance. Because of fears about the NHS. I can sort of see where they are coming from.

Speaking of the NHS John Pilgers documentary The Dirty War on the NHS is on ITV1 tomorrow night.

Excuse me, Helena.

A support thread for whom?

I'm more than happy to post verbatim what at least three posters on that thread said but where can I post that? I can't post it here because this thread must absolutely not be deleted as a TAAT. There are far too many valuable contributions here.

I can't post it on the thread you're on because it's a group hug thread and MNHQ have intervened and said corbyn supporters are allowed to have a 'support' thread.

People will stop donating to food banks because they need to buy private health insurance? You think this spin is any better than what those posts actually said?

People will stop donating to food banks because they need to buy private health insurance? You think this spin is any better than what those posts actually said?

That just sounds utterly ridiculous.

The Tories are not going to abolish the NHS. You would have to have been putting vast amounts into food banks before it comes anywhere near the cost of private health care.

Where might one find this thread?

Yeah, cos a couple of tins of baked beans, a jar of jam and some rice pudding will totally cover your private healthcare.

I’m not sure switching from food bank donation to private healthcare quite adds up.