If Starmer stated what a woman is...

[Lykia]

Would you vote for him? If he categorically stated a woman is a woman/born with female sexual organs ( ie biological woman) or whatever the correct definition is.

Surely he must know that if he said this then a lot more women would vote for him.

Moreover there are more women out there than trans women so why doesn't he just come out and say this? Is this his hill to die on?

He's an intelligent man surely the next election would be much easier to win if he just came out and said what a woman is.

Hasn't he made his opinion on this clear enough? Whether or not he believes it is not the point, who knows, but jumping on the woke bandwagon along with his colleagues isn't going to win back Labour voters. He comes across as pathetic and weak (and two-faced after the recent partygate stuff).

I'll probably give my postal vote to my dc and let them close their preferred candidate. Its their future after all

i told dd at the last election that I’d vote for whatever she chose (and ds1 in the brexit referendum)

It’s a struggle to understand how anyone believes it, but they do.

They have been convinced that it's the correct, progressive thing to believe, so it must be true. Therefore there must be some subtle, complicated meaning of "woman" that makes it true.

They don't know what that meaning might be but won't admit it because that would make them look stupid.

There is at this point nothing whatsoever that Starmer, or the Labour, Libdem or Green parties could say that I would trust in or believe.

If they have finally seen the light on women and homosexuals and children re safeguarding needing equality of rights and access too to TQ+ people? Well I don't want in power those who were so easily duped into obviously untenable and inhumane positions by a political lobby for so long, and said such appalling things to so many people, and supported trying to force it through law.

If they are merely making nice noises temporarily to make women think they can be trusted in order to get voted into power to then stab women, homosexuals and children in the back by galloping through the promises made to the political lobby they're the hostage of?

Frankly that's even scarier.

Until a new sane centre left socialist party rises from the ashes of this utter mess, the left remains interested in alternative facts a la Trump and being the party of naive children with insufficient life experience to realise they are being manipulated.

I'll take corrupt buffoons over that any day. I'd rather try and fix poverty and people's heating/food bill problems from the inside as a long term aim than try to get laws rolled back that removed people's rights, equality and access and subordinated women to men.

It is also beyond naive to not realise this is not a bug of leftist politics right now. it is the main feature.

High on ideology and talking to the pixies with a deep belief of moral superiority and entitlement. Go and look up Mandelson's 'post democratic era' beliefs. He wasn't kidding. They really do believe it. They don't believe in democracy or representation, they believe in Doing To the masses as their high faluting ideology and total lack of any real life experience dictates.

They are fucking scary people.

@Artichokeleaves

you have summed up my thoughts precisely.

@Artichokeleaves

Mine too.

They don’t accept the law, they don’t accept the democratic method as a basis for making law. Their own morality trumps everything else.

He does not care about winning any elections. His job is to keep a left leader out, nothing more nothing less.
Winning an election would be a side hussle at best.

Every single person out there knows what a woman is and what a man is. It is really about someone being brave enough to say that the emperor hasn't got any clothes on.

Is it about winning votes from trans people? No. It is about winning votes from heterosexual young people (who call themselves queer) who believe trans rights to be a massive issue.

Gay rights has never been a big political issue (no party or leadership has lost on the basis of that issue), but people who never lived through it think that those issues dominated a generation.

Yes, I agree.
“Waffly reverse weasel” made me laugh. He was such a weasel when he came on here, I felt embarrassed for him.

He was such a weasel when he came on here, I felt embarrassed for him.

Yes.

The women were all batshit, but at least had the honesty and integrity to set out their stall of batshit and stand behind it.

By their deeds shall ye know them. Never listen to a damn thing a politician says, just watch what they do .

But her emails!!

i wish people whose brains are entirely colonised by US politics would stop discussing UK politics. It’s not possible to say anything useful or insightful about UK politics if you’re mentally translating the UK situation back and forth from the American one. It garbles your thinking.

No because he's shown himself to be an arrogant misogynist who will throw women under the bus to promote himself. I don't think those things change. He's an odious and dangerous man and if he did actually see the error of his ways he would also see the need to exit politics forever.

On this I would need some specifics about what that would mean in terms of governance and legislation. To a significant degree I don't care what he thinks personally, I care what he'll do.

But I am also very concerned about the general identity politics approaches that have made them vulnerable to gender ideology, I think they are equally as damaging, so I would want to have a sense of what role that thinking has in the part, and I would like it to have less influence than it does now.

If I had some assurance on those things I'd be willing to look more carefully at their other policies and compare them with the other options. But while they are in the weeds of id pol I can't get behind them.

Yeah, I'm sorry to say I believe this.

We are in a period where the dominant forces on the left do not really believe in democracy. You can see this in studies and polling of the younger generations, belief in democratic principles are at an all time low. And this is the group that parties like the LP believe will keep them in power. Or at least they believe they need to kowtow to them because they are the future or some idiocy like that.

This isn't a crazy aberration, it's long been a dangerous tendency on the left of politics that needs to be guarded against, and many leftists seem to have forgotten their own history (or never knew it) and are merrily going down that old path.

Anyone who thinks this is just foolish talk, look at how the LP ignored what was going on under Stalin because they were so determined he was going to bring in the new, good society, they were blinded to the realities by ideology.

That's where they are now - blinded to what is real, what is actually going on, by their ideology.

No, they believe he always was one but it has taken him time to realise that.

And they can believe that because they believe that manhood and womanhood (and non-binary-personhood) are differences of the mind rather than the body.

My issue with people in power who believe this is not the belief itself, but that they refuse to acknowledge that switching out the legal and social definition of womanhood from the body to the mind does not change the fact that some people have female bodies, nor does it change the fact that people with those bodies are often not treated fairly. What it does do is remove protection and support from them.

This!

Even if Starmer convincingly recanted his previous bollocks I would not vote for anyone who had spouted manifest nonsense. He either did believe that rubbish, in which case your judgement is terminally flawed or he was saying so for reasons of expediency without actually buying into it, in which case he is/was bent. Labour can fuck off for the foreseeable.

Every time I read that quote it gives me the absolute rage. How dare he.

Greasy haired Max Headroom imitating whiney idiot.

Sorry. I feel better for saying that 🤣

He is also misrepresenting the law which is unforgivable.

@InTheShadeOfTheFigTree

😂

As opposed to Boris who clearly stated that transwomen should not compete in women's sport. Nadine Dorris has taken this forward with the sporting bodies.

I can’t help but wonder if telling half the population their biology is unspeakable was what little Keir had planned for himself when he got up that morning.
I think he is a weak, pompous sanctimonious fool with no policies. I will never vote for a party lead by him.

If he suddenly changed tack on this, I would despise him even more for the dishonesty and the ulterior motives.
He has a whole bunch of bullshit beliefs, which I am sure he sincerely believes, and yes, he is self righteous and sanctimonious.
But, as MangyInseam and Artichokeleaves just said, the bigger issue is the whole Left agenda, which is fucking terrifying.
So no, I will never vote Labour again, until or unless they discard the fascism of the Left.

Yes if he made it crystal clear that the a) The Labour Party will protect single sex spaces and uphold the equality act. b) That they will not reform the GRA/self id (I'd like it even more if it was repealed). c) That they will not class any therapy that doesn't immediately affirm gender questioning as conversion therapy. Very unlikely so No I'm sorry I can't vote for Labour.

I think we should maybe turn the TWAW question around and ask our politicians What is a Male? errrr ummmm. A human born Man and also a woman. None of it makes sense.