'Virtue signalling coward' Labour's war escalates

[BovaryX]

The Labour war over the trans pledge has escalated, with Rebecca LB et al accused of virtue signalling cowardice. Also, the decision to allow self identified 'women' onto women's only Labour shortlists is going to be legally challenged. Labour have created this absurdity and now the laughable contradictions will be exposed to public scrutiny and ridicule.

Labour’s civil war over transgender rights descended into even deeper bitterness last night after one of Jeremy Corbyn’s senior aides called leadership hopeful Rebecca Long Bailey a ‘virtue-signalling coward’ for threatening to expel feminists from the party – and a crowdfunded legal challenge was mounted against the party

Oh well done, Lachlan Stuart! He's been GC on twitter for a long time. He seems like a lovely thoughtful man
BoreofBabylon
Yes, his comments are great and it is good to see someone speaking out against this from within the party. Apparently he was at the WPUK meeting in Brighton, which given the descriptions of it I have read here must have given him food for thought.

If that's true, why were they all so keen to sign it? If it's a fringe issue that they disagree with, why not just refuse to sign? The fact that they signed implies that either they actually agree with it or it was important enough that they had to sign in order to stay in the leadership race

Well said OldCrone The threat to freedom of speech, the zealotry, the bankruptcy of #no debate, all of this is getting prominent media coverage in the wake of Harry's case. It is RLB et al who are on the wrong side of history. And the further Labour digs itself into this ditch, the less electable they will be.

Don’t we all want a potential prime-minister who signs things without understanding what they say?

Aesopfable: 'Don’t we all want a potential prime-minister who signs things without understanding what they say?'

Indeed.

The stuff of dreams.

What's astonishing is that R L-B thinks this is the best way to present her position.

FFS

(And I completely agree with you, OldCrone.)

RLB is a Tory plant

There are aspidistras with more sense.

Don’t we all want a potential prime-minister who signs things without understanding what they say

Mockers

I really believe that a huge part of labour have now turned their sights on to the millennials and uni goers instead of people over the age of 30. I think they don’t actually care if they lose voters now as They are playing a long game and betting on where the trend will go

Then they are doomed to disappointment. Idealistic youngsters will grow up and experience life and those ideals will shift and fade. “if you are not a socialist at 20 you have no heart and if you are not a conservative at 40 you have no head” (or variations on that quote). Obviously not true for everyone but views do shift. When you are 18 and at uni you have little to lose, when you are a 30-something graduate with a mortgage and family and holidays abroad...

^If I didn't actually need the Labour Party to offer an alternative to the present government, I would be crying with laughter about this.It's comedy gold.
Except I do, and it therefore isn't funny at all. It's appalling^

I think that is a great point. It's hilarious. Except it actually isn't. It's an indictment of modern politicos and their sycophantic pandering to lobbyists and Twitter clowns. Your name has got Ziggy Stardust playing in my head.....

@AesopFable, perhaps we should admit too that youngsters simply do not know anything about running and administering complex societies. Why do we have all this obsession about the youth? I remember when it started to come in, all this fascination with attracting a bunch of teenagers who don't engage well - because they don't know anything yet!

There is a Julie Bindel article in the Spectator which discusses the achievements of feminism over the last forty years. She makes some interesting points about the pressures on young women.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/feminism-for-men-is-bad-news-for-women/

I agree, BovaryX. And I love 'Twitter Clowns', which captures the element of pure performance for an audience, with a massive disconnect between that performance and real-life engagement outside the ring, when the make-up comes off.

I also agree with Julie Bindel. And I think it's been 30 years hard work by the misogynists to get us here.

The late 80s saw the fight to make it 'feminist' to be pro-prostitution and to refashion taking a stand against porn as being 'in-feminist' and 'pro-censorship'.

And here we are.

Mired in a terrible misogyny.

A misogyny with the real-world effect of seeking to make it an expellable and sackable offence to put forward views and opinions based in sound Femi it logic.

Feminist logic.

@thecatfromjapan

It's significant enough to have come up in the Ashcroft report into why Labour lost the GE.

Hi @thecatfromjapan I have just gone and read the Ashcroft report. Maybe its a truncated version I have found but also checked the excel data tables - but I cannot find where the debate over trans rights features in it at all never mind as a reason why people didn't vote Labour.

Please can you point me in the right direction.

Thanks

@ThrowingGoodAfterBad

And the consensus is that women should fuck off back to the domestic life and "be nice" while men take everything our grandmothers fought for, while indulging their every sexual whim.

Consensus? By whom?

Page 22 Regina, bottom left hand column, to the top right hand one, all about woke culture, 125 genders and so on.

They are playing a long game and betting on where the trend will go.

They'll lose that bet, when detransitioning goes mainstream, as it inevitably will. There are some tragedies (and lawsuits) just waiting to happen when hordes of transitioned young people wake up to what has been done to them, with Government's sanction.

If I didn't actually need the Labour Party to offer an alternative to the present government, I would be crying with laughter about this.

Daily Mail readers are laughing and gloating in the comments. Can't say I blame them. They are right.

Partly because of this, some also felt the party had come toembody an excessively politically correct or “woke” culture, which would be intolerant of what they considered sensible, mainstream views: “Sarah Champion in Rotherham was booted out for saying the vast majority of child abuse groups were from ethnic minorities. She was speaking the truth, but because it was ‘racially insensitive’ it was, ‘oh, you can’t say that’. Why? It’s 100% true;” “They’re classing themselves as liberals but won’t let anyone else have a different viewpoint;” “You’re a bigot if you don’t agree there are 125 different genders;” “They can be woke, but they can also be vitriolic. I’ve heard them say things to Conservatives where I thought, ‘well, that wasn’t very nice’;” “The other day Jeremy Corbyn even did his pronouns! He said, ‘my name’s Jeremy Corbyn and my pronouns are ‘him’ and ‘his.’ You can Go

Thanks, Captain.

I went off to the ExpelMe thread, where SingingLily helpfully copied and pasted some quotes.

But your citation is even more thorough.

There is no denying it is a factor. No matter how much people try and claim no one cares and it's only a small internet based rebellion, it isn't. It's not the only factor by a long way, but it is to blame.

I found it fascinating that it was bubbling away in the Ashcroft report - because, up until I read that, I would have said it wasn't an issue with voters.

I thought it had the potential to be an issue with voters, was a huge deal within the Party - but the wider electorate didn't much care/know.

And that little section stopped me in my tracks.

I was wrong.

It's already an issue.

And I do believe it has the potential to become far more of an issue.

It's not surprising, the report is based on what people on the street are actually saying, you just have to eves drop on what people in your local Morrison's cafe are chatting about to know this is discussed.

Twitter isn't the voice of the public, it's a very small group and selected voices, it's a bubble.

@thecatfromjapan @CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost

Thanks for that. I think you can see how I missed it as it is one sentence in a 36 page report.

Yes I agree its 'part' of the woke/bigotry/intolerance of the hard left within the Labour Party that turns voters off.

I still think that the toxic vehement angry debate though is a bubble internet thing that the rest of the world is passing by. They just aren't talking about this on the no.38 bus.

I do think it has the potential to become and issue with voters.

But not the way the debate is being conducted by both sides just now.

They just aren't talking about this on the no.38 bus.

Actually they are, but it's when Good morning Britain does something, like when India Wilbury was on and talking about how it's gone too far and is at totally stupid levels, lots of people talking about it then and agreeing.
It's not something that's discussed everyday, but it is there, people are talking.

They just aren't talking about it
In the election, Labour were obliterated in their former strongholds The reason why is they have become a party which panders to the tiresome woke fixations of their student voters. But instead of learning from this wipeout, they are currently doubling down with Stalinist purges and trans pledges. The antics of RLB et al are yet another demonstration of their utter unfitness for power. At the same time, the case of Harry Miller demonstrates the existential threat to freedom of speech which is at the heart of the #no debate zealots. This issue is now making headline news. Because the somnabulant media has finally woken up. Except for the Guardian of course....