Third female prime minister

[Tallisker]

Come on Labour, read the room

Yes, usually in a contest there are several front runners and several chancers.

But the front runners in this case were a man and a woman, and the chancers also included a woman.

As I said before, many PMs inherit significant issues. This isn't confined somehow to women.

It just seems like there is some kind of grasping at straws desperation to prove that they would never really vote for a woman seriously. You can make an argument that Thatcher was chosen for reasons other than people being confident she was the person for the job, but then that too is not an uncommon scenario with party leaders. Compromise candidates are common. It's just politics.

The accompanying notes say it levelled out due the to the drop in earnings of the top percentile. Believed to have been caused by the financial crisis.

'inequality rose considerably over the 1980s, reaching a peak in 1990. Since 2010, income shares have been relatively unchanged'

Interesting, thank you!

This is true. Who would have thought that Labour would exclude woman from their consideration as worthy of rights?

Not confident. She's a fucking tory, But she at least acknowledges women and women's rights. Therefore miles better then Starmer in that respect.

Do either of them - Truss or Starmer- really care about people who are currently suffering because of current conditions? No.

But Truss at least knows what a women is. And yes, that is important to me. And fuck the wokebros who condemn me as a witch. Fuck you, misogynists.

She is awful, but still not as bad as the Misogynists Party aka Labour.

The problem is that women wanted a career and children and got both - it two careers!

You ask Sir Kneeler Starmer what a woman is he’ll say, “It depends on the context!” A weak man playing to the left!” I heard him today - all angry bluster and no substance. He’ll say anything to be elected.

It's all foam and no substance though. Playing to the left would be building loads of affordable homes and nationalising energy and railways? Which are popular even with Tory voters.

But no , mustn't upset the City spivs. So here - have a pronoun. Have several in fact . They're free after all. Sorry but I can't see anything 'left' about this bourgeois bollocks.

I was surprised by how close the result was- 57% Truss/43% Sunak. Weren't all the awful racist little Englander Tories supposed to be unable to vote for a non-white person? I suspect if his wife weren't so ludicrously rich he could have won (even hardcore Tories realise this is an impossible visual in current times).

The Conservative party appear far more flexible about what a voter for them looks like than many leftists. This is a serious blind spot for Labour.

Weren't all the awful racist little Englander Tories supposed to be unable to vote for a non-white person?

Yes - and you have to wonder how much longer the Labour Party is going to be able to peddle that particular narrative.

The Conservative Party is very secretive about who its members are, but I think it's quite likely that a good minority of its members are from ethnic minority backgrounds. Look at the number of ethnic minority MPs who have risen to cabinet positions in the past few years: Rishi Sunak, Sajid Javid, Kwasi Karteng, Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Nadhim Zahawi. Twenty or thirty years ago it might well have been the case that the membership was dominated by racist little Englanders, but that seems to have changed.

I currently have a very cheap subscription to the Times in order to read Janice Turner. Murdoch got behind Truss some time ago and Sunak almost disappeared from their coverage, so that outcome was a surprise to me.

O boy! No doubt if they’d have voted Sunak in you’d have been calling them ‘Awful sexist little Tories, unable to vote for a woman!’ Cut the crap!

You didn't read Beowulfa's post properly did you?

I think you can draw parallels with the Hispanic populations in the US, which the Democrats had traditionally assumed were "theirs", but those populations tend to be conservative and Catholic, and tend to pitch up for the Republicans.
www.npr.org/2022/07/23/1113166779/hispanic-and-minority-voters-are-increasingly-shifting-to-the-republican-party

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/07/working-class-latino-voters-political-alignment/670593/

They still vote Democrat but not as a bloc. I followed the 2020 election on fivethirtyeight.com. There was some Democrat in Arizona agonising about ' what can we do to reach the Latinx voters?' To which one of them replied : 'You can stop calling us Latinx'.

IME many minority ethnic voters are aspirational and see business as their way up the ladder. They don't want to identify with Labour's emphasis on poverty and victimhood. They regard Labour as being for losers.

I was canvassing for Labour in the 2015 election and was practically pinned against a wall by a woman of Asian origin who berated me for assuming that because of her ethnicity I assumed she was poor and would vote Labour. I'd only handed her a leaflet! She told me not to make lazy assumptions. In that moment I caught a glimpse of my unconscious bias. That, combined with Brexit, volunteering with refugees and a growing sense of how victimhood is so easily exploited, has made me less certain of where I stand politically.

During the 2016 US election I heard a UK radio host interview an American woman (of Mexican ethnicity) who ran a group called something like Latina Women For Trump. She explained her voting rationale succinctly (mainly on economic grounds) whilst the interviewer floundered, clearly totally thrown by the concept of a minority woman with right wing opinions. It was very revealing.

@pattihews
This is not a comment on the actual issue, merely a 🙌to you for being willing to change your opinion based on new evidence. This is a lesson I have had to learn over and over in my life - not to be closed-minded.

I do think it's important to acknowledge that out of the ten parties currently represented in the HOC, ONLY Labour has never had a woman leader.

Alliance Party: Naomi Long (2016 >)
Conservative Party: Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, Liz Truss (2022 > )
Democratic Unionist Party: Arlene Foster (2016- 2021)
Green Party (England & Wales): Carla Denyer, Co-Leader (2021 >) Since 2008, it is policy to have co-leaders, one male one female. But women's leadership goes back to 1992, when Jean Lambert became Principal Speaker.
Liberal Democrats: Jo Swinson (2019 - 2019)
Plaid Cymru: Leanne Wood (2012-2018)
Scottish National Party: Nicola Sturgeon (2014 > )
Sinn Féin (NI): Michelle O'Neill (2020 > )
Social Democratic and Labour Party/SDLP: Margaret Ritchie (2010-2011)

@Malie
There is clearly a big issue here in terms of balancing different viewpoints. We have to be inventive, not punish SAHMs (I'm saying "mums" deliberately, because their careers are more likely to suffer than dads') or women who want or need to get back to work, and most importantly spread the cost of maternity between the father's and mother's employer. We have to acknowledge truths as our starting point. Most women have, or want to have, children. Having children is a totally different proposition for a woman than for a man. Maternity rights cost employers money and time, and some of them are reluctant to take on or promote women for that reason. Let's not pretend there is no cost, let's instead not make the woman's employer bear the full cost. Full disclosure - I have no kids, never worked in HR so I may be talking unworkable nonsense, but I hope my point about starting with honest discussion stands.

@wackamole
That is damning, yet depressingly unsurprising.

I agree Labour supporters push the narrative a lot but the make up shows a different story. I think they are left behind on this one.

I just saw that deputy PM is also female - Coffey

Yet Labour introduced all women shortlists way back. Although I never warmed to Harriet Harman I think she'd have been a decent PM. For the Tories Anna Soubry was very impressive.

FPTP leads to destructive and bitter intra party feuds imo. But that will only change if a narrow Labour win leads to some rainbow coalition. It's just as like the Tories or Labour win big by getting 4 out of 10 votes again. Bonkers.

Yvette Cooper might have had a chance for Labour too but didn't stand. Don't blame her, but Labour might have dropped the TWAW number if she was in charge.