do you think that a Labour's policy on trans issue played a part in their defeat

[Gone2far]

and the same for the LibDem's, obviously?
It played a large part in my vote, firstly because of the policies themselves, but also because they were symptomatic of Labour/LibDem's attitude to Women, but I don't think many people felt that way, or had any awareness of the situation .
I was just wondering what other's thought.

Yes agree Arnold

No! I think you vastly overestimate how significant this issue is to people outside a small MN/Twitter bubble. Even friends who are v politically literate have no idea about the issue, though it's changing. But as people say, the woke/hectoring nature of momentum is a different matter.

This, incidentally, is the reason why the Democrats will lose to Trump next year. When Elizabeth Warren put her pronouns in her Twitter bio, I knew she was toast.

I really hope that the Democrats take a long, hard look at this election result in the UK and ponder on what it means for the US election next year. The countries are very different, but the US has never had a hard-left government and they aren't about to elect one. It's exactly like what Alan Johnson said - it's student politics and it's identity politics - and it absolutely doesn't resonate with the vast majority of people over the age of 35.

I think brexit was the biggest driver, with authoritarian identity politics being another major thing that put people off Labour.

John Curtice was talking about it yesterday - a high proportion of people identify strongly as a brexiter or a remainer. Then there is another division - social conservatives, and social liberals.

Both of these issues cut right across the traditional Left wing - Right wing divide. So the traditional old labour voters in the former mining towns could well be both brexiters and social conservatives - and found themselves voting for Boris. I saw one guy on the news yesterday saying "my dad would be turning in his grave."

So put it this way - young labour Momentum types shouting "bigot" at people and endorsing young woke politics would not have helped Labour one bit. Labour needs to seriously consider this - Corbyn may have been adored by young Momentum types chanting his name - but he was not popular on the doorstep.

I agree with Bovary and everyone else who said it was a problem as part of a wider, authoritarian, identity politics environment, rather than a direct issue. This is a factor in the rejection of labour by the northern WC electorate, and is one of the factors that caused Brexit in the first place (a white WC lad does not feel privileged and doesn’t welcome being told to ‘check his privilege’ when he’s just as unlikely to be able to afford a family sized home and 2 kids as anyone else in his generation).

Where with the Lib Dem’s it became a direct problem due to Swinson’s God awful media appearances. The few times it came up with Labour (as with Laura Pidcock) the topic wasn’t dwelled on.

Labour have forgotten that to win elections you have to have policies that appeal to the highest proportion of the electorate.

Boris knew this - and you can be damn sure Dom Cummings knew exactly what he was doing, and who they were appealing to.

For me it did. I voted this time with self If as my main concern, my parents however deserted labour for the first time ever and their reason was 100% Corbin and his band of merry loons.

I agree with you Arnold but this was one scolding I enjoyed yesterday

Also I would say that the sheer aggressiveness of momentum on social media didn't help at all. I'm on a local FB group with over 18,000 members in recent weeks it has been bombarded with labour posts saying you're evil for voting Tory.

It was the same five people over and over and despite people pleading with them to stop they carried on, insulting people who had disagreed.

They seemed to forget that their behaviour was being watched by a largely silent majority of members, many of who had yet to make up their minds. The hectoring was/is incredibly off putting. I don't know what effect it had but I noticed that the labour candidate received 4000 less votes than they did last time.

The thing is, there are echoes of the identity politics on this thread. The dismissal of Oxbridge folk as unable to represent the interests of working class people typifies the reason Labour failed this time. The only Labour leaders in recent memory were university educated, one at Oxford. Many - and not all - of the decent people in the Labour Party are university educated, including Oxbridge. There’s no dividing line between good and bad where Oxbridge is one one side and “proper working class” another - the reality is much more messy, and that’s a good thing because it points to another way than identity politics.

Remember, all the public school haters, that Seumas Milne went to Winchester, and Diane Abbott educated her son privately. I don’t see either of those things as bad, but I do see them as hypocritical when the rest of the population is expected to apologise for behaving the same way.

David Miliband went to Oxford, and so did Kier Starmer. Either of them could have beaten Johnson with a moderate and inclusive (as in appealing to the wider population rather than simply along identity lines) campaign, and either of them would have produced a manifesto that genuinely could make a difference to working class communities.

It was the reason why I spoilt my ballot - I'm usually Labour with Lib dem as an alternative if Labour put up a useless local candidate. It's why my oh didn't vote Lib dem or Labour and why my mum didn't vote Lib dem.

I agree I think it affected Lib dem more directly than Labour. Labour it was Corbyn and momentums hactoring & bullying of anyone but especially women (and the trans issue is part of that problem)

But we're not representative of general population here, not enough people know how much it was a labour policy whereas Jo Swinsons interviews brought it out as an issue.

General public don't like the implications when they realise but the majority still think transwomen are a tiny minority that go through surgery. The difference needs to be spelt out

No, though it was the main issue affecting my vote. But that's only because people either aren't aware of the situation at all (which is easy enough if you've never encountered it in daily life, or you only access the many sources of media that never mention it) OR they think we're all meanie haterz because they believe ALL transwomen are lovely sensible people like Fionne Orlander or Debbie Hayton and they think those are the kind of transwomen we're angry about. They just aren't aware of what's actually going on (and how decent people like Fionne and Debbie are under attack just as much as biological women)

Self ID is the symptom rather than the cause. It's a sign of parties being captured by niche interest groups and being so disconnected from their core voters that they can't see how a) irrelevant it is to most people and b) how badly it will play with those who hear about it.

Itsallgonetoofar Bit of a cross post there!

They seemed to forget that their behaviour was being watched by a largely silent majority of members.... I don't know what effect it had but I noticed that the labour candidate received 4000 less votes than they did last time

This vitriolic abuse directed at any dissent is another part of it. The totalitarian impulse is so explicit in the current Labour Party. The desire to no platform, intimidate, bully and silence is the dominant feature of the trans lobby. Fanatical ideologues might be able to bully people into silence or even get them sacked. But in the privacy of the voting booth? The resistance is clear

It certainly did for me. I voted Remain but there was no way I would ever vote for the Lib Dem because of their policy on trans issues.

I don’t think it did, or possibly affected maybe 0.01% of the vote. I’m vested in this because of my personal situation, but whenever I tell anyone IRL what has been happening, none of them have been aware of it. Even people who I have told, have told me over the past few days (with all the Lib Dem coverage) that they still haven’t seen anything about it in the MSM. It’s still not on the radar for the overwhelming majority of people IMO.

Bovary - yes, they've forgotten that the people who they block, silence or no-platfom still get a vote.

I saw Adrian Harrop moaning and raging about this on twitter yesterday.

One of his replies was from a young woke thing with an anime avatar - who said:

"how can this have happened? #Vote Labour was trending at no.1 all day yesterday! It must have been rigged!"

Because young woke twitterer doesn't realise s/he is existing in a little twitter bubble, and there is a massive world of voters out there who never even venture onto twitter.

No! I think you vastly overestimate how significant this issue is to people outside a small MN/Twitter bubble

There was much discussion on here that the very pro self ID policy of the SNP (which the Holyrood MSPs can implement) would lose them votes. The Wings Over Scotland site made a huge issue that this was a vote loser for the SNP, and Wings was mentioned with approval by posters on FWR.

Well that loss of votes didn't come to pass did it?

avocadoze you're missing the point. I have nothing against people going to Oxbridge and though against private education, I can see why some people do it (esp in Diane Abbott's case (black boy, central London? Yeah, I'd go private too.) I'd never judge an individual who made that choice.

The point is the people who think they know better than the working classes themselves what is good for them. The people who basically think anyone who grew up outside north London is a bit thick and just doesn't understand and has voted against their own interests. They go on about the Murdoch owned press, which, yes, is an issue, but can't see that they're just as influenced by the Guardian and whatever blogs they read.

I'm working class, went to a good university, have what I suppose would be considered a middle class job these days but no chance of owning a house before I'm 50 or so. But when I talk to urban Labour supporters, they're just clueless. One of my friends asked why my parents didn't just give me a deposit for a house! Oh sure! I'll just ask them next time, I'msure the 50k I need is just hanging out in their bank account!

They live in a different world. Cis privilege het privilege race privilege, they love to bang on about. They have a MASSIVE blind spot when it comes to class though.

Well that loss of votes didn't come to pass did it?

To be fair, all mention of self ID was scrubbed from the manifesto for this election, so the SNP clearly took note that it was a vote loser and acted accordingly.

I switched my usual lib dem vote to SNP for this reason.

To make things clear, I have no issue with trans people and know a few people that are trans. Very nice people, clearly happy in their new gender and respectful of everyone else (e.g a trans woman I know still uses the male loo's for example and has no intention of using female loo's as she doesn't ever intend to have a full sex change, too risky she says). It's the 'I can put some lipstick on and claim I'm a woman and get to use female changing rooms, toilets and play in women's sports' thing that really irritates me!

You find that true trans people, as in people that truly feel they were born in the wrong body go through rigorous counselling, apply for the document to change their gender and never force their beliefs and rights on others to make them feel uncomfortable. This is the right way in my view. They must have X amount of counselling sessions, they must get the card and they must respect the fact that as they weren't born the sex they wish to be, not all options will be open to them but they can live fairly comfortably as the opposite sex without harassment and segregation and people must respect their choice. Self ID is a load of shit and I don't believe it fits in this world for many reasons. You should never be able to wake up one day and decide you're the opposite sex and everyone must run with it. Fuck off. Don't get me started on non binary....

One of my friends asked why my parents didn't just give me a deposit for a house!

Ha! Yeah - I’ve had that too. My mum lived in a council house that she couldn’t afford to buy even with a 30% right to buy discount, so 🤷‍♀️

No, not on its own. But I think Momentum as a whole was a factor - Sophie Wilson was, I believe, a Momentum candidate..

I also think the've lost some very experienced, hardworking members since Momentum took a grip and that this came back to bite them during the election because the new members were just not up to the job e.g. the thread about a canvasser knocking on a poster's door and then being abusive.

As I understand it, Momentum now dominate the Labour executive so this isn't going to go away.