Stonewall chair quits Conservative Party to support Labour

[LadyLobbyist]

I see Iain Anderson, Stonewall's chair, has quite the Conservative Party and pledged support for Keir Starmer, over the Tories' "willingness to put vulnerable groups on the front line of a culture war." Not a huge surprise but does rather make my leftie heart sink further, since he will undoubtedly have influence over Labour thinking and policy on Self ID etc.

FT gift link here, although I think they only allow it to be opened 3 times... on.ft.com/3jQjDgU

@nilsmousehammer you kid yourself.
And there's more chance of getting the Tories at this point to learn some better sense re poverty, NHS and other issues than trying to get Labour et al back from La La Land.
Really ? Still waiting for levelling up and more investment up here, things which actually affect ordinary women and their families every day. Why worry about changing rooms in shops and leisure centres when your town has few shops and swimming pool is shut and actually you can't afford visits to the pool, when your child is unable to get a decent education and has few job opportunities. And as for all those vulnerable women in the criminal justice system, where exactly was the the funding to improve their prison experience and turn lives around when funding has been decimated ? Na let's worry about trans women in prisons when the most pressing issue is actually the degrading conditions the tories are happy to leave those women in.

He's right.
The Conservatives are definitely using trans to manipulate voters.

The very fact that the head of Stonewall was, until now, a Conservative is something that's been kept very quiet. There are lots more in the party. They've deliberately stirred up the debate and kept the lying narrative that it's all left wing parties when it quite definitely is not.

You only have to look at the recent headline thread about Keir Starmer that wrongly says he's bringing in Self-ID. It's a deliberate lie and every time anyone replies to that thread, it keeps that headline in view. That's the point of it, of course, so that anyone glancing down the list of topics sees the headline, even if they don't engage in the conversation.

The reality is that the Conservatives are just as much of a problem and they're the ones in power, passing legislation. Gillian Keegan recently said that 16 was old enough to decide to trans. She's the Education Secretary, responsible for policy in schools and Early Years.
Hardly a murmur on here about that, though - all too busy propping up that lying headline.

Am I the only person genuinely surprised that a Stonewall Chair person was a member of the conservative party in the first place?
I actually had no idea.
I don't think one more labour member who is in favour of TWAW will make much difference, a drop in the ocean perhaps.

No, the issue is that most of the issues Labour shout about as imperative for women, cannot actually be addressed or solved once women is a mixed sex group largely revolving around the emotional needs of less than 1% of men and a huge herd of misogynists.

You are kidding yourself that women can wait and fix everything else, and then try to undo the wreckage of their rights. We're only going to get one shot at this.

@nilsmousehammer sorry but how can you be so naive to think that the tories will solve anything once they've got your vote. They've had 13 years to sort things out and only now are trying to attract GC women.

Huge signal to supporters of GRA reform that the winks been winked & the nods been nodded by Labour leadership.

To be fair to Keir, he hasnt really been equivocal on this, apart from some meaningless blah about "women's safe spaces".
The next election at this point, is Labour's to lose - they will ram self id through the commons.
Life long Labour voter & I'm fucking dreading the next election.

I'm still going to wait for the Labour manifesto so they won't be able to say they haven't been given every chance. But I will say this now: Any party that tells women 'We will only support you if you agree to give up your own spaces and your own language' has, as far as I'm concerned, lost any right to call itself progressive, not to mention its moral compass.

@Floisme agreed but still cannot vote Tory. Too many lies. If you can't trust them on anything why trust them on this...

I've never had any intention of voting Tory. My backup plan, if Labour don't get a grip on reality, will be to check out the independent candidates. We normally have a couple and I've never paid them any attention before but hopefully one of them will turn out to have a functioning brain. In fact, if there's a good one, I might vote for them even if Labour do get a grip because I'm starting to sense that the current party system is fucked.

DrMarciaFieldstone · Today 12:44

There’s now way I could vote Labour, but I don’t think they care; they’re clearly not even trying to win womens votes.

If Starmer does bring in more erosion of women's rights in the manifesto, then unless there's a good independent, I'll be writing a message on my ballot paper. I could never, ever vote Tory and the capture of the Lib Dems & Greens means that I can't vote for them, either. Our local Labour MP has a majority of almost 6,000, so spoiling is unlikely to make a difference.

only now are trying to attract GC women.

Which still puts them one step ahead of Labour, and several steps ahead of the the other parties where I live who still think that GC women are transphobes, homophobes and racists. (Oh, I take that very personally Nicola!)

The idea that the conservatives are only doing this so you'll vote for them so don't give them the satisfaction is deeply weird. Of course they're only doing this so women will vote for them! Of course they see a possible electoral advantage and have decided to see if they can win some more votes. That's how it works. You don't need to tell us, we know.

Many women are quite grateful that any party wants their vote.

Do you think Iain Anderson failed to get Rishi Sunak to support this particular campaign and quit the Conservative Party as he feels he can bend Keir Starmers ear?

Re this person fleeing. Labour can have him. He’ll fit in more with the gender ideology and lies.

@StephanieSuperpowers I think that if as you say 'women are quite grateful that any party wants their vote' then they are tone deaf to what's happening in the country. Fair enough if all was fine and dandy, no corruption, pork barrel politics aka outright bribery, public services functioning well, levelling up finally being implemented, brexit being handled competently I'd agree. But the country is floundering. Millions are affected, not just women but our children and other loved ones, be it because the NHS is falling apart, social care has collapsed or schools cannot ensure decent SEN provision.

@MarshaBradyo the good fortune of privilege eh ? 😂

What do you mean?

Emojis don’t make it clearer tbf

Do you really think that elevating yourself to a morally superior position and then hectoring people you consider to be morally inferior is likely to be persuasive Namecangeonce?

Who the duck do I vote for? KS my mp and I am a traditional Labour voter.

@Namecangeonce , well, the labour party shouldn't have treated women the way it has if it needs women's votes to change any of that - assuming labour is not going to do what green parties have done in other countries and completely abandon any programme other than promoting trans rights once it gets into power. And given how in thrall these parties are to activists, I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if they did that.

I can see you're in favour of women accepting that every other issue matters more than the ones women care about and that women should just pipe down and do for everyone as usual, but I don't agree. If women won't stand against this, nobody will.

Vote Posie, of course!

You do wonder if there's been some kind of 'bidding war' going on between Tory and Labour parties for the dubious honour of Anderson's seal of approval. It might explain Sunak's sudden re-interest in legislating over 'conversion therapy' without even waiting for the outcome of full Cass review.

It rather confirms my view that we're on our own here and can't trust any party with our rights, but I've no criticism for anyone who decides differently. It's going to be an awful choice and we'll all just have to weigh it up and make the best one we can.

@MarshaBradyo I recognise your name from other threads. Your experience of life in leafy London is very different from many peoples. You invariably rock up with your tales of 'amazing state schools' (although you always remind us you could afford private), the well funded local public services and the brilliant community spirit amongst your equally well heeled neighbours. You are fortunate not to have to worry about anything it seems and have been pulled up several times on this by other posters. I highly doubt that you vote anything but Tory.

The problem is, all of them.

Tories crap

Labour crap

Green crap

LibDems crap

SNP crap

@StephanieSuperpowers you're wrong. I am somewhat GC but no way do I look to folk like Suella Bravermann or Priti Patel for moral guidance.