Kemi Badenoch appointed new Minister for Women and Equalities

[Manteiga]

And International Trade Secretary. I'd have preferred to see her as Secretary of State for Education in addition to Minister for Women and Equalities, but this is good news.

twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1584957913059454976

That's politics for people who want quick soundbites, not clarity.

Exactly. I prefer to get to know my MP and their views rather than just look at voting records without details. Making statements like ‘ voted against laws for equality’ are completely meaningless without examples.

I completely agree with this. One policy politics falls apart with someone like this. She also voted against buffer zone at abortion clinics. But she knows what a woman is so we are supposed to be grateful for crumbs?!

Excellent post WahineToa

Rory Stewart made a good 3 part radio 4 series about the history of debate and how democracy is based on being able to freely discuss ideas. Free speech.

I really hate that the left are completely unable to do this rationally without name calling. If you label something negative you should be able to explain why.

It allows the tories to continue to remain in power.

This is what I was responding to @thedancingbear

TBF I think he was saying he accepted that there are genuine principled GC views, he just doesn't think that Kemi is expressing them, he thinks that they are motivated by her right wing populism.

Agree, they're not intelligent or constructive arguments.

But they're not up there with 'monstrous' or 'delusional'.

It's 'the Right thinks the left is misguided, the Left thinks the right is evil' playing out as it usually does.

Sorry @beastlyslumber meant to quote you.

and there's this - Equalities, huh?
www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25693/kemi_badenoch/saffron_walden/policy_set_png?policy_set=social

Is calling someone a "snowflake" the same level as calling them "monstrous"? To think so surely proves the point about "snowflakes"?

I'm not sure calling someone a 'snowflake' or 'woke' equates with 'monstrous', 'disgusting' and the multiple slurs of mental health though.

crosspost.

Thank you @Ereshkigalangcleg, that’s exactly what I was trying to articulate.

i clearly don’t have the brainpower for this today, so I’ll stop fucking up tour thread. Apologies

As Arabella said, it would be more constructive for no one to call their political opponents childish slurs.

I really hate that the left are completely unable to do this rationally without name calling.

Same, I would have proudly called myself left wing years ago but this does not align with my principles. Plus I’m old enough now to understand there’s probably no such thing as left and right in politics anymore really…

He was agreeing with a post calling KB a nutter/right wing populist. I'm not sure where I've misunderstood anything here? Reading back through the quotes I feel my response was fair enough.

Where have I misrepresented you @thedancingbear ?

This is really not a gotcha.

Unless you go through each one in turn and find out

a) what exactly was that MP being asked to vote on?

and b) what were their reasons for voting as they did?

It means absolutely nothing.

Particularly since at the moment equalities has been warped to the point of basically meaning TQ+. If these equality votes were to do with things that damaged or harmed the eight other groups then an MP might well have had reasons not to vote. The whole black and white, 'if you don't vote like one of Pavlov's dogs every time someone holds up something saying LGBT+ or Equalities you're evil' thing is beyond silly.

Baroness Nicholson is constantly whined about for voting against gay marriage. ^Many gay and lesbian people did not agree with the vote, as it stood, with the wording, for gay marriage'. That doesn't make them homophobic or evil.

Which laws though? As that could include things around trans which I believe should be medical and science based.

I would almost go so far as to put the reason for successive Tory governments in recent years at this type of emotive, information-free tribalism.

The left (of which I am part) often seems to be either unable or unwilling to discuss and debate rationally.

Instead we get repeated characterisations of the Tories as 'evil' or 'monstrous', ad homs, righteous fury and self justification. A refusal to discuss the issues - probably why 'no debate' worked so well, tbh, it's building on that tendency to other and rail against anyone who disagrees.

Personally, I favour a larger state and more regulation, and most other left wing policies, but the failure of those on the left to learn how to argue like adults is doing nobody any favours.

She seems to mainly vote with the majority of other Tory MPs. So she's a typical tory. Not a right wing nutter unless you think the entire Conservative party is composed of right wing nutters.

I think there's a lot of truth to this.

It's not good for those of us in the centre/on the right either - never coming up against coherent opposition doesn't help us keep our thinking healthy and our arguments honed. We'd like the left to get their act together too, and most of us recognise they're motivated by the same values we are - compassion, cooperation, wanting things to improve. We just disagree with their proposed solutions/prioritisation of issues, but that's politics. We're all human at the end of the day, none of us are monsters.

It's always interesting how these threads go. The number of (presumably) Left wingers posting along the lines of Right wingers are mad/evil/stupid, with no other argument, is very telling.

I said “perhaps” this is why - I think some people believe that because it’s ‘exclusionary’, it’s not progressive. The left is generally associated with progressive ideology, the right with traditional. The advancement of LGBT rights is mostly associated with the left, therefore the general public might be inclined to see GC thought as right wing. However, the advancement of women’s rights is also associated with the left. Sex-based rights and gender-based rights are in conflict though. Maybe they’re both left wing but just opposing sides of an argument. I didn’t say she was right wing because/if she’s GC. I said perhaps this is why she’s perceived as such.

Yep, Tirisfal. Effective opposition is essential to everything. I often think the HoC debates only exacerbate things, too.

This, in spades.

I just wonder what they think they will achieve? When will it dawn on people that misrepresenting other people’s views and calling them hyperbolic names never makes them change their minds it just makes the name caller look disingenuous. Anyone who actually believes KB is a far-right extremist must have lost all sense of what these words mean. Presumably this is what happens when people constantly attempt to artificially tweak the meanings of words.

the failure of those on the left to learn how to argue like adults is doing nobody any favours.

For some reason they seem to have concluded that you don't need arguments if you can just accuse your opponent of some immorality. I guess this is the same ideological place that "no debate" comes from. There has always been the tendency on the left to demonise and dehumanise their opponents. It has gone so far now that they don't even realise that they aren't presenting arguments. They think to say "her views are monstrous" is an argument, and should end the discussion.

It's making the right weaker because they can now use simple ridicule and statements of fact to win arguments. That means they're also not in the habit of testing their views in any rigorous way.

It's bad for everyone.