Starmer and the Labour Party Really Cannot Read the Room

[ChristinaXYZ]

Labour and Self-id

twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1402586773499244549

Rosie Duffield gets the predictable kicking in the comments. Still no public support for her. That's what the Labour leadership think about women's rights and women who have an opinion.

Why any women would vote Labour I really do not know.

We know there is an issue with the current situation - the medical route was painful, long and arduous.

Are you talking about the current process to get a GRC, if so it really isn't that difficult, GRCs are given to men with histories of sexual offending and deception. It's far harder to get disability benefits in the UK. If your talking about SRS, that has never been a requirement for a GRC.

All he's said is that he is supportive of trans rights and, generally, supportive of self-id

But will all know what that will mean in practice, demands that any male with a GRC is allowed into single sex spaces.

Fool me once shame on you, and all that.

I’m not as optimistic as some of the PPs. Starmer is a massive disappointment. He either doesn’t get the issues and is spouting words fed to him by Stonewall or one of their cronies in Labour, or he does get it and doesn’t care because it’s only women.

Personally, I think he’s not a deep thinker and just sees this as a black and white issue - that is, you’re either For this in all it extremeness, if that’s the right word, or you’re an evil transphobe. Nothing will persuade him. Sadly I’ve seen far too many supposedly intelligent people think like that, particularly men (I wonder why??).

Sorry, but I’m never going to vote Labour or Green or for any of them again while they refuse to listen and refuse to respect my sex and are happy to shit all over half the population.

@SmokedDuck

I mean you could equally say, join a party with a more sensible policy on this, and see what you can do to move their other policies. It might be more manageable.

But the fact is if they keep losing votes, the LP won't be a player at all. So they can see the writing on the wall or become an irrelevancy.

Exactly. There are probably more politically homeless women than the entire current membership of the Conservative party, if we all join maybe we could actually get something done. It certainly has crossed my mind. Imagine if they be shifted to the left on economic policy... no less crazy than dreaming that Labour will realise that sex matters, women and girls matter and identity politics generally is divisive neoliberalism a million miles from socialism.

@thecatfromjapan

You see, I just don't think that is Starmer's position on self-I'd, KeepPrisons.

I'm convinced he knows there will have to be limitations.

Apart from anything else, there would be a raft of legal cases.

Plus, if Labour adopt self-id without limits - that's just waving goodbye to government.

You know it, I know it, Starmer certainly knows it.

As I keep saying, there is nothing in that statement that suggests all-out self-id is Starmer's position.

Indeed, it's carefully crafted not to say that.

Surely self-declaration is, by definition, without limits? Otherwise, it's not self-declaration.

When he says: reform GRA to introduce self-declaration, that removes all barriers and externally imposed criteria. If on the basis of self-declaration someone can obtain a GRC and a new birth certificate, then that cohort of 130 prisoners currently in the male estate can, on the basis of self-declaration, obtain the right to be housed in the female estate, be recorded in all data as women and thus evade risk ax for sexual re-offending.

I agree that he knows exactly what the ramifications of this are for prisons. In fact, I know he knows because I know he has been told and who told him.

So, we can conclude either that he is confident of never getting into power, so he can say whatever he likes without risk. Or (and quite why he thinks that saying this will advance him along the path to power) the safety of women in prison is price that is worth paying.

Late to the thread and just dropping in to ask - is that a rabbits foot buttonhole he has?

Well, the current Labour position is that there needs to be consultation over self-id.

Which there does.

I just can't see self-id coming in now without exemptions. Because - as we all know - without exemptions, it runs straight into existing EA legislation.

I'm not saying, 'Relax. It'll all be fine.' I wouldn't say that. I'm saying that Starmer is miles from endorsing unlimited self-id in that clip.

And I think now is the time to join (or re-join) Labour and push.

There is a very pragmatic group in the Labour Party that is extremely aware that unlimited self-id is not a vote-winner.

Bottom line, I don't trust Starmer now.

There is a very pragmatic group in the Labour Party that is extremely aware that unlimited self-id is not a vote-winner.

Where? Is it vocal?

There is a very pragmatic group in the Labour Party that is extremely aware that unlimited self-id is not a vote-winner.

They need to let starmer know, because he seems to think differently.

Breathe Starmer has one of the finest legal minds of his generation. I think we can probably accept he's a deep thinker.

However, I'm not sure he's a politicsl genius. And it's quite possible that you can think too deeply, and not have enough of that flair for sending a zeitgeist and communicating it with an energy that captures people. And I fear that's where Keir Starmer is.

I really think he needs to be bold. He needs to risk alienating the members that are keeping Lsbour at a distance from the vast numbers of people who aren't members.

I think he has to risk actually pissing off a lot of the members.

@ArabellaScott

Late to the thread and just dropping in to ask - is that a rabbits foot buttonhole he has?

No. He has his rabbit’s tail butt-plug in the inside pocket of his jacket and it’s peeping out a little

@Orf1abc

In this respect (though not in many others) he is reading the room.

That room is far bigger than your echo chamber.

It's certainly a lot bigger than the percentage of the population currently prepared to vote Labour.

Apologies, I should have commented more on what he was saying... except it was hard to listen. I’m outside the UK and I think this might be the first time I’ve heard him give a speech. It was curiously flat and toneless: utterly lacking in passion.

I know he’s long out of the game, but I remember Tony Blair in his heyday and there is no comparison at all. Where’s the spark? Where’s the fire? Where’s the feeling that he’s speaking about something and really means it?

So sad. I hoped he’d be better, even if I think he’s wholly wrong about this.

Ah, rabbit-tail butt-plug.

I thought he looked a bit puffy and slightly queasy - that'll be why, I guess.

You know, I used to think I should stay in Labour and try to fix it from the inside, but then I thought - if someone shits in your tea, how much time do you spend trying to fish it out before you just think it's time to just bin it and get a different cup of tea?

I think you're right, Cat and Warrior

I always come back to the point that Rosie Duffield, Paula Lamont, Kiri Tunks - all those women who have stood up - have not resigned their membership. They're still there, still fighting.

Don't, for heaven's sake, go believing that the Conservatives will say anything different the moment it suits them. Indeed, two or three years ago, it's exactly what they were saying.

This is a cross party problem that we all have to fight. We won't do that by giving up our places of influence within political parties that will set the agenda.

I couldn't listen to more than 15 seconds, is he the most boring person EVER!

He has the charisma of a old dead walrus.

KeepPrisons Well, according to TRAs, yes, self-id is everything or nothing.

But does it have to be? No. It doesn't. It can be anything the law decides. It can be an easier process of self-documentation in certain areas, and for certain documents, in certain situations. With exemptions.

It wouldn't make TRAs happy - but it would probably make life easier for enough people.

But ... I'm not Starmer.

For all I know, he has indeed signed up to the full-fat version.

But I somehow doubt it.

The proof of the pudding will be the next manifesto. And that might be quite soon, given we're looking at a 2023 GE, perhaps.

Until then, I still say that now is the moment to join Lsbour and push.

@Tanith

I think you're right, Cat and Warrior

I always come back to the point that Rosie Duffield, Paula Lamont, Kiri Tunks - all those women who have stood up - have not resigned their membership. They're still there, still fighting.

Don't, for heaven's sake, go believing that the Conservatives will say anything different the moment it suits them. Indeed, two or three years ago, it's exactly what they were saying.

This is a cross party problem that we all have to fight. We won't do that by giving up our places of influence within political parties that will set the agenda.

Yes.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

MidClrgs I’m in a CLP which literally drummed out councillors with more than 49 years experience - men and women - who wouldn’t sign up to a public TWAW manifesto, and in which the leader of the Labour group goes on social media to publicly berate anyone - even members and ex-councillors with decades’ worth of experience - who dares even a sniff of a question of the local party line on trans stuff. Women in the local party have just been stamped on (and some quietly harassed into resigning or shutting up). The idea that we can effect any change in that culture is laughable, and what’s more, none of us want to make the effort given the personal nastiness that results.

Exactly. I'm not going to be made to feel guilty for leaving a party that has treated me like shit. No one would expect black people to stay in a party that was campaigning to rescind anti-racism laws, or gay people to stay in a party fighting to overturn gay marriage. But, of course, we're women so it's our fucking job to serve everyone, even if they treat us like crap? No thanks - that both misogynistic and pointless.

I'm not saying, 'Relax. It'll all be fine.' I wouldn't say that. I'm saying that Starmer is miles from endorsing unlimited self-id in that clip.

If he was miles away from endorsing self id, he wouldn't mention it. He didn't need to talk about it at all.

Why should anyone believe that he doesn't support self id when he went out of his way to talk about it?

I wouldn't dream of trying to make anyone feel guilty.

I think that if you were bullied out of the Party on this issue, that is wholly unacceptable.

And I feel very angry on your behalf.

But, even so, I do think this may be the best moment for people to try and help get Labour - the major Opposition Party - back to where it needs to be. In touch with the electorate - not locked in a cave with its members.

I think this is the moment. And if we lose it, we lose it for a long, long time.

Starmer may not be the politicsl genius we need / but he's no fool.

Sadly, the way things stand with Lsbour, the one that replaces him is likely to be a fool.

Incredible, I know. But there you are.

Well if I didn't know it before I definitely do now. Labour have lost my vote. My membership got cancelled last year when it was abundantly clear that they didn't know what a woman was.

Such a shame Keir. You're making a real pigs ear of this shit

@HeavenHotel

I couldn't listen to more than 15 seconds, is he the most boring person EVER!

He has the charisma of a old dead walrus.

The writer andrew o'Sullivan went to school with him, and said he was very passionate and enthusiastic. He's obviously lost that spark now.

It was unacceptable and yet it has happened to so many women, and to absolute silence from other Party members,
He signed a pledge, he just announced in a video that he supports self ID. the idea that he secretly means something else has no basis in fact as far as I can see.