Where is the Labour Party

[ChristinaXYZ]

In the light of the several significant things that have happened over the last few days re women's rights where is the Labour Party. They are the official opposition. Where is the statement demanding an enquiry into how the Tavistock mess could have taken so many years to uncover and address? where is the statement on women's rights in the work place post Alliosn Bailey's success? Where is the statement about women's safety in sports such as rugby?

Zip, zilch, nothing...

On the other hand they have refused Labour Women's Declaration a stand at the Labour party conference

twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1553654729011601411

Not only are the wrong on the subject of women's rights and misogynistic in their repeated lack of support for women MPs like Rosie Duffield and Luciana Berger and but they are also completely gutless.

Either too gutless to admit they are wrong and start addressing the way women's rights have been squeezed

or

too gutless to continue with their previous line on the subject thereby throwing their version of trans rights under the bus as well.

Meanwhile we have right wingers like Michael Gove praising Kemi Badenoch for her stance on the Tavistock.

The Tories have been in power a long time* and should have done something earlier but at least they have done something and can see and name the problem. They have been slow rather than hypocrites or gutless. If you cannot see and name the problem then you can and will do nothing, just like Labour.

I am so angry with them.

And whose likely to be the next leader Nandy, Creasy or Rayner? (assuming Labour capable of electing a woman) or changes-his-mind-to-suit-the-weather Wes Streeting?

On the plus side at least a few (very few) Labour MPs have signed that letter in the Guardian.

*admitted more like a series of governments rather than one Tory government

Labour is not irrelevant and it has POWER right now, not just by being the opposition party but through real power at other levels. Labour runs Wales and controls London and all the major cities in England and Wales and many other local councils. They are responsible for Education, social care, local sports centres, libraries and much else for tens of millions of people and allocate billions of pounds. If we let these gender ideas embed even deeper at local level then women and gay people are sunk. Any refuges and services that focus on just women and gay people will BE DESTROYED, individuals will be sidelined and silenced. This is already happening, and will get worse. Do not think the Tories can stop this because they can't any more than Labour can change how the Tories run the shires.

If Labour Women's Declaration does not win the fight in the party then in the long term women's rights are in serious trouble. Besides the massive power they already weild Labour are on course to win the next general election right now probally in coalition with SNP/ Lib Dems who despise women even more than them. Lets not pretend that the position of Labour on gender ideas will make them unelectable. We had a local election in May where they did very well. Most people are going to vote on the economy in 2024 and will be sick of the Tories after 14 years. That is what the polls show and what ordinary people I know are saying. Yes it might mean Labour will get a few less seats, but it will not stop the Tories losing.

The Gender craziness in Labour can only be stopped by confronting them in the party, along with criticising them from outside. Those outside do not help by running Labour down, or minimizing how influential and powerful Labour is.
This ideaology has its grip on much of the UK establishment, and in many unions, we have to confront it directly through political advance in all the parties.
Obviously individuals do not have to get involved in Labour if they don't want to, BUT do not not underestimate the importance of the fight. Until both main parties are Pro-woman then women's rights in the UK will not be safe. The fact the Tories are more pro-woman finally now is good, but if anything that makes the fight in Labour more desperate as the gender types are painting pro-woman MPs as traitors.

Labour in Wales is pro men and pro trans.

There's a good article in today's Telegraph by Suzanne Moore about the Labour Party and the hole it has dug for itself on this issue. It's behind a paywall but may have been archived.

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/08/02/labours-trans-rights-policy-looking-increasingly-absurd/

Where I am schools, libraries and leisure are largely out of local authority control - as I understand things, my LA only really has control where there's a statutory responsibility. However I agree with fromorbit's broader point that this has gone way beyond party politics.

Sorry fromorbit that probably isn't your broader point at all! But I do take your point - as things stand right now I won't be voting Labour at the next election but I don't kid myself that's going to fix anything.
But I also think Labour supporters are underestimating the enormity of the task ahead and I maintain that, if they want to overturn this majority and actually form the next government, they're going to need every vote they can get.

Brilliant post @fromorbit

It's why despite everything I'm still in the Labour Party.

What a fantastic article AuntMunca Such a tragedy Suzanne no longer writes for the Guardian as they're the people that need to be confronted with the awful reality of what's happened.

Yes, MrsOverton, it is very sad that Suzanne felt she had to leave the Guardian. As someone who took the Guardian every day for over 40 years, I never thought I would end up preferring the Telegraph (although, to be fair, there's quite a lot there I don't agree with either). Like the collapse in my support for Labour, it's quite discombobulating.

That is sort of touched on in the Peter Daly article I mentioned @MangyInseam

"...the problem is that many organisations that are moral communities are required, but fail, to undertake the requisite intellectual exercise to interrogate the contours of their own moral code. They fail to understand the complexities of their own particular philosophical position – be it gender identity theory or anything else – or the implications for those who do not ascribe to it or are opposed to it. Without that interrogation, an assumption is all too easily made that the reason they hold their moral code is because it is – and by extension they are - morally right. The extension of this is that anyone who doesn’t share the moral code is as. a matter of ineluctable logic, inevitably morally wrong. Such organisations avail themselves of, as Sonia Sodha terms it, “the luxury of childishly dividing the world into goodies and baddies”."

Why do people who have/do vote labour think they have the moral high ground? Serious question, it seems reading these threads that some posters think that voting labour is a virtue and are suffering from cognitive dissonance about the misogyny they are finding now.

live voted Lib Dem , labour and mainly conservative because things they say have appealed to me at the time, I don’t define my self by my voting record and yet some people seem to from reading these threads.

Apologies @LK1972, I now understand what you were talking about when you said good luck with that. I was ridiculous to think that our rights could be protected, when the Tory Bill of Rights is diminishing them further. www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/british-bill-of-rights-major-step-back-for-women-and-survivors/

Lol, I did mention it was controversial @TooBigForMyBoots

Glad you now agree the EA strengthening is the way to go, as Rishi suggested

Unfortunately I don't share your optimism given the degradation of women's rights under the Conservative party and their clear intentions to reduce them further @LK1972.

Ok, that's up to you, I guess you prefer just feeling sad - I try and think of what can be done.

Tories are listening to the voters on this issue, and are promising to strengthen the relevant legislation.

The question remains what the Labour Party's response to recent news will be, as was posited in OP.

Currently tumbleweed, but I'm sure they are working on 'balanced and considerate' response!

Left-wing people have a tendency to bring their kids up to think they have the moral high ground with their views. Class war and all that. I know this because I had this kind of upbringing myself in the 1970s but now vote Conservative for multiple different reasons including a general realisation that freedom of thought and speech are crucial to a healthy democracy.

I do not prefer to feel sad. More realistic. Sunak pretending to give a shit and tossing some crumbs our way while destroying our rights isn't doing it for me. He will probably lose to Truss anyway.

So two more years of the Tories stripping our rights away with their massive majority and there's nothing the Labour Party can do about it.🤦‍♀️

Tiresome, TooBig.
You have been told more than three times to stop derailing the thread or start your own thread about the Tories
Frankly, it’s getting boring and tedious

Fair comment Sunfriedegg, there's a vary tribal element to supporting Labour and some analogies with religion, e.g. it might well be the basis of your friendship groups so you've got a lot of your life invested in it and, if you walk away, you're leaving behind a lot more than your voting record.

I now vote Conservative for multiple different reasons including a general realisation that freedom of thought and speech are crucial to a healthy democracy.

This baffles me. The Tories have done an excellent job of cracking down on people's right to peacefully protest. They hardly champion freedom of speech.

Meanwhile Labour have done a marvellous job of demonising women who have gender critical views...

Basically, we have to be obedient little serfs keeping our traps shut. Anyone else feel like they are living in North Korea these days?

Yet that is where 12 years of Tory legistlation and Tory MP's complaints to the police about women speaking commonsense.

Women have at least two more years of having their rights stripped back further under this disgraceful shower.

@TooBigForMyBoots How many times do women need to explain this is a thread about Labour? Do you understand that?

It's a thread to criticise Anyone But The Conservatives @LK1972. The Lib dems are mentioned along with "lefty men" (in a bastardisation of GG's quote), Labour voters and how "left-wing" parents bring up their children.

Our rights are under threat right now from the Tory government. They have already damaged life for women in the UK. They are planning to roll back our rights even further. 12 years at look at how awful Labour are has been disastrous for us. "Look at JC, or was it the bloke before him, the one with the bacon sandwich and 2 kitchens, don't look at our misogynist policies."

I am very suspicious of it as a message. It hasn't benefitted us in the past and it doesn't benefit us now.

Perhaps a typical labour politician on the gender issue. . Deny reality, don’t read the room and ignore what you are told.

I'm not sure what the purpose is behind the 'But the Tories....' posts but all they do for me is demonstrate that the Labour Party have got nothing.

I'm desperately looking for positive reasons for hoping that women who want to protect their sex based rights can still have confidence in Labour. So the news that there's been communication with the Women's Declaration - that was helpful.

If all you've got is negativity and thinly veiled emotional blackmail - well it's up to you if you want to bring my attention to that, but don't complain when I draw my own conclusions.

OMG, maybe it's Angela Raynor!