Women don’t feel safe with Starmer's Labour

[ChristinaXYZ]

Interesting article on Unherd

unherd.com/2021/05/women-dont-feel-safe-with-labour

"... violence against women is a major issue for many — if not all of us. All the more so after a recent succession of particularly vicious murders – Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in London, and Julia James in Kent to name the most high-profile ones. But it hardly featured in the election campaign. Rape convictions have fallen to a historic low, domestic violence is rife, sexual harassment is an everyday experience for girls and women and confidence in the criminal justice system has collapsed.

Leading figures in the party, however, seem more interested in ticking off fellow MPs and activists who “like” social media posts from feminist organisations than meeting any of the women’s groups expressing concern.

At the end of last week, the Labour MP and former frontbencher Khalid Mahmood homed in on identity politics as one of the causes of Labour’s poor showing, arguing that the party has been captured by “brigades of woke social media warriors”. But he’s a rare voice of sanity in a party that seems to have surrendered to a form of magical thinking."

It’s evidence that people vote for a name not the actual ethics or policy of a party because they can’t be bothered to look into the details or think about how those details affect other women and children.
It’s being wilfully blind.

hahahaha indeed GCAcademic

Ive never voted anything other than Labour but it's quite clear Labour dont want my vote and the thousands of women like me who believe that women are adult human females, allowing your party's polices on women to be controlled by a group of blue haired middle class 20 somethings is a bad idea and that any party leadership that stands by and allows the constant abuse of Rose Duffield has absolutely no bloody guts whatsoever

This is Mumsnet, not Twitter. It's not possible to mute individual posters you don't approve of.

I don't think you could have summarised more effectively the attitude of the current Labour party. Kudos.

Quite.

I feel I don't know what labour stands for at the moment. My politics are left wing, but I'm not convinced they are a party for women. I'm not sure they ever really were.

I honestly think the only way to take power from the Conservative party is a left leaning alliance campaigning for PR. The left have been lost for years.

I'd massively trust Labour more to fund services for women, and also properly fund PIP etc. Tbh I think the financial neglect from the Tories is an intentional way of keeping women in their box.

However, I live in Leeds where a local Labour MP recently said women were bigots for wanting single sex prison and not a single one of the other local Labour MPs I wrote to came back to me.

In the W Yorks mayoral elections I voted for Yorkshire Party followed by the Conservatives because they were the only ones who were campaigning to close the "managed approach" in Holbeck. Labour, who have had control of the council for decades, think everything is hunky dory and commissioned a white wash report that purposefully downplayed all the many harms.

Labour claim to support minorities and women, and yet on this key issue that is mostly impacting women and children from minority ethnic communities, they don't give a shit because it goes against their woke policies.

''Rape convictions have fallen to a historic low, domestic violence is rife, sexual harassment is an everyday experience for girls and women and confidence in the criminal justice system has collapsed.'' These are all law & order and justice issues and again, are happening under a Conservative government.

Quite. And I'd go further and point out this has happened since the conservatives undid a lot of the good work Keir Starmer put in to increase rape prosecutions, when he was Director of CPS. That was done under a Labour government.
It amazes me that people can seriously blame Labour for VAWG when the conservatives have been in power for over a decade.

I think identity politics is heavily damaging Labour support but the Conservative Party are happy to create and implement policies that actively harm the most disadvantaged women in real life, yet because they don't say TWAW a lot of women on this board are happy to give them their vote.

If there was an election tomorrow I'd still vote Labour because I trust Starmer to act in womens interests, based on his track record outside government. No way am I voting for a party with a leader proven to lie, track record of cheating on partners, financial mismanagement,tainted with the suspicion of corruption and cronyism.
It gives me the rage that so many people think the Conservatives are great. What has happened to society?

I dont think the conservatives are great at all, I loathe them as a party and always have but equally how can Labour enact policies to benefit women if their definition of women includes men?

If there was an election tomorrow I'd still vote Labour because I trust Starmer to act in womens interests, based on his track record outside government. No way am I voting for a party with a leader proven to lie, track record of cheating on partners, financial mismanagement,tainted with the suspicion of corruption and cronyism.
It gives me the rage that so many people think the Conservatives are great. What has happened to society?

What's Labour's definition of a woman?

Are you actually bothering to read what people are saying? Most of us ex-Labour supporters consider ourselves politically homeless. We do not think the Tories are great.

A lot of us are Labour Party members or long-term Labour voters. Indeed, Joan Smith, who wrote the article, is one such.

It's so depressing that the Labour Party doesn't want to listen to us. The party is in a complete mess, it has now had two disastrous elections on the trot (general and election) , it hasn't been in power for 11 years, it is riven by infighting, and yet it seems determined to alienate a large chunk of its most dedicated supporters.

I have been a Labour ally for 50 years (ie since I was a child and was old enough to understand what the Labour Party was) yet Lisa Nandy wants people like me expelled from the party. What hope does it have of ever getting in to power again with an attitude like that?

Labour are just not interested in what women have to say if it doesnt agree with the partyline

I strongly suspect that the reason a lot of women dont get a reply from their labour MP is that most of their offices are staffed by students/interns of the blue haired variety who probably just delete any emails they dont agree with on women's issue. just stop the MP even seeing what women are saying.

Nobody in Labour can rest on the laurels of a government that was in power over 10 years ago, and whose own policies and outlook was rejected by Labour members in favour of Momentum driven identity politics. I've got friends who worked at the heart of the last Labour government, and they could not bring themselves to vote for what it has become either.

The sense of betrayal is a factor with Labour, this isn't the case with the Tories, I don't expect better.

Are you actually bothering to read what people are saying? Most of us ex-Labour supporters consider ourselves politically homeless. We do not think the Tories are great.
No need for that!
I read a lot of posts on this board about people voting Conservative "because they know what women are". Yes, they know what women are. And they expect us to stick to our role and happily provide unpaid care to the elderly and vulnerable in society, smile and "home school" and work in the pandemic, accept discrimination at work because all the employment tribunals are too expensive, stay in abusive marriages or get shafted by our abusive ex husbands when we can't afford legal representation, not get the medical treatment we need because it's expensive and the NHS doesn't prioritise women, etc etc etc.

I think Labour won't say what women are but also won't put policies in that damage disadvantaged people. So to me it's the lesser of two evils.

I used to be a lib dem member and say I'd never vote Labour. Now they really are a joke and I've resigned my membership.

It's very very sad.

I used to be a lib dem member and say I'd never vote Labour. Now they really are a joke and I've resigned my membership.

I used to be a Labour member and I resigned for the same reason. As I said, the sense of betrayal I feel means I can't support them, even holding my nose.

It gives me the rage to think that people think the Conservatives are great

I don’t think the Conservatives are great, I just think that they are the least worse option when it comes to self id, which I am vehemently opposed to. I will never vote for a political party that thinks it can ride roughshod over women’s rights to appeal to a vocal minority.
Sex is biological and binary.

Yes I can understand that. I don't know what's got into the world to be honest. I used to be extremely politically engaged, now I can barely bring myself to read the news as I feel so powerless. Noone to vote for, no chance of change, and I feel like my values (honesty, doing what's best for the most people even when it's hard, collaboration, inclusivity) are in the minority.

@NiceGerbil

This isn't really a party political issue.

The problem is that none of them, in the end, give a fuck about women, one way or another.

That's the problem.

We are half the population FFS.

This is evident in the way they jettisoned any pretence of prioritising women's issues the moment the LGBTQ+++ (aka Stonewall) lobby came to prominence. They turned on stalwart Labour women who reject TWAW and made them pariahs in the party they had been dedicated to for so long. I imagine it was almost a relief - they don't have to pretend to care about women's stuff any more, that was too much like hard work, so they've allowed the latent misogyny to seep out by switching allegiances, aaaannd relax!

The Tories are strong on this because of Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and opportunistically seizing on identity politics (which is a genuine issue). I don't think they're any less misogynistic as a whole, although they do seem to have a much better record of promoting women.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

The sense of betrayal is a factor with Labour, this isn't the case with the Tories, I don't expect better.

Same here. I was leafleting for them in May 79 and when Thatcher was elected I thought my world had ended. It's Labour who have left me and the kick in the teeth is indescribable. I'm not saying I'll never vote for them but they will never be my party again.

@LadyWithLapdog

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Oh, doll, I don't think Chekhov would've approved of your language. Are you reading the Chekhov for school? Nice to see him still on the curriculum.

@QuentinBunbury

No need for that!

I'm sorry. You sound as pissed off and jaded as the rest of us.

However, I don't need a lecture on how shit the Tories are. I am the child of immigrants, a coal miner's daughter, and the daughter of a Labour councillor. Labour Party politics ran through my veins, and I voted for them in every election up to 2017/18. AS others have said, the betrayal is now too much.

Why is it that the LGBTQ+ lobby is allowed to be a single issue entity, yet women are constantly told that their fear for their very existence, and placing their first and foremost in their politics, are wrong. That this huge concern should be suppressed because of social care issues, employment issues, this that and the other issue? Don't you see that this is just as sexist as the fact that it is more often than not women who bear the brunt of those problems? Not people who identify as women, women? Because people who identify as women rarely seem that bothered about all the shit work that comes with it, they are in it for the glitter.

Ereshkigalangcleg, Floisme et al, same here. I still have the same values I had when I voted Labour all through the 80s and 90s and every election since. It's Labour that's shifted, not me.

As well as being persona no grata with various woke TWAW people in my life I'm now persona non grata with another set of former friends, some GC, who see the world as Labour=Good and Conservatives=Tory scum. By spoiling my vote I'm now Tory scum, apparently. Labour is no longer the broad church that it used to be.

[quote TedImgoingmad]**@QuentinBunbury

No need for that!

I'm sorry. You sound as pissed off and jaded as the rest of us.

However, I don't need a lecture on how shit the Tories are. I am the child of immigrants, a coal miner's daughter, and the daughter of a Labour councillor. Labour Party politics ran through my veins, and I voted for them in every election up to 2017/18. AS others have said, the betrayal is now too much.

Why is it that the LGBTQ+ lobby is allowed to be a single issue entity, yet women are constantly told that their fear for their very existence, and placing their first and foremost in their politics, are wrong. That this huge concern should be suppressed because of social care issues, employment issues, this that and the other issue? Don't you see that this is just as sexist as the fact that it is more often than not women who bear the brunt of those problems? Not people who identify as women, women? Because people who identify as women rarely seem that bothered about all the shit work that comes with it, they are in it for the glitter.[/quote]
Could you do me a. favour and instead of writing LGBQT+ write LGB and QT+, please? Because the LGB lobby cleared its desk and went into retirement years ago, once equal marriage was on the cards. It's not LGB people lobbying for anything — unless it's the right not to be shackled to the TQ+

Sexuality has nothing to do with gender issues. It would be enormously helpful if everyone would separate them out. Thanks.