Link to WESC session with former members of the LGBT advisory panel
This is the session that was referenced recently when the WESC had Liz Truss speaking to them, where one of the MPs referenced that Truss had been accused of creating a hostile environment for the LGBT panel. It's mainly a very long whingeathon but it's worth watching to see the number of ways that they're framing Liz Truss as not fit to run the brief on Women & Equalities that she has alongside her international trade brief too.
The GEO is no longer funding a lot of the groups linked to this panel. Jayne Ozanne's evidence in this session really has to be seen to be believed. The startling aspect is just how enthralled the MPs asking the Qs still are, with these lobbyists. Except they don't see themselves as lobbyists but experts and Ozanne especially is highly offended by Liz Truss' handling of the W&E brief. Listening to this session, it's the level of entitlement & the belief that these people have the power to push for Truss to be removed from the role she has, that is most remarkable. She's hostile. She's not showing enough deference to these 'experts'. She's incompetent. She's too thinly stretched to do a good job. She's changed the remit for LGBT planning. She's ended funding for some groups.
What seems to have been forgotten by these people is that the role isn't all about their wants, but is across a wide range of interests.
I'm not a Tory or support the Tories. But on this, I think Liz Truss is absolutely the right person for this job. She's got the measure of the grip these groups have had on the GEO & has taken the steps needed to loosen that. I think those groups who have lost funding really ought to have taken far better care over what they attached the GEO logo to, in order to claim their overreach was fully supported by the GEO. I remember that being the start of Truss publicly taking a stand & I think the era of lobbyists effectively running the GEO is entering its end phase.
Truss has moved the GEO out of the cosy Westminster lobbyist haven & severed the established networking that's worked so well for the lobbyists pushing the LGBT dogma agenda. And the lobbyists are well aware about what that means:
Link to Tweet by Christine Burns of Press for Change.
“ Relocation of a team which you regard as having gone native is playbook stuff. By initiating a relocation of the GEO team that is going to take 2-4 years Truss aims to neuter a department opposed to her destructive presence. She aims to break it by disorganisational means.”
So, the upshot is that Liz Truss is definitely across her brief a bit too well for some of the unhappy lobbyists & far from being 'incompetent' she's the 1st person with significant power to use that in ways that at least slow down the lobbyists agenda. They'll regroup and get set up to try & re-establish the networking & influence they've enjoyed for quite some time, but it will slow things down significantly.
The abhorrent claims by Nancy Kelly about 'gender critical' views this week should be seen within the desperate circumstances they're now facing - the gravy train looks to be coming off the rails & when those used to the unquestioning deference they've enjoyed while on this journey suddenly realise what's at stake, they're not set up for critical self reflection. They have co-opted every social justice narrative going & are in constant battle mode, unable to just stop the constant attacking of anyone who crosses their path. But even I didn't think they'd stoop this low in how they did that, at this point.
So, when Truss has made the decision not to support Self ID, and income streams are tied up significantly in your own pyramid scheme & funding pots, it might have been a better tactic to not attack the minister you should be persuading of your interests. The trouble is, they still believe their own #nodebate hyperbole & have no plan b other than to smear & discredit those who stand in their way.
I hope Truss continues to dismantle this house of cards.