Labour ‘must fix its trans stance to win the next election’ - party needs to clarify its policies to be closer to the public’s views on the debate

[IwantToRetire]

Labour is trying to position itself as the party of the centre-ground of British politics. It has identified middle-aged, suburban women as a target demographic to win over ahead of the general election.

Labour strategists have studied polling that shows how a gender gap in voting has emerged since 2010, whereby women are on average more likely to vote Labour.

But the polling notes that Labour’s advantage is “specifically among women under 50”, while the Tories lead in women over 50.

It comes as a network of Labour activists and staffers prepares to relaunch itself next month as a think tank that will produce monthly reports on how the party can appeal to its target voters.

The organisation, called Labour Together, aims to come up with a raft of policy recommendations that reposition the party as “socially to the Right and economically to the Left”.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/03/18/labour-must-fix-trans-stance-win-next-election/

Labour are not proposing any of this, they do not even have a manifesto on this... its just Tory smear

Starmer is on video saying he will introduce self ID.

www.thepinknews.com/2021/06/10/keir-starmer-labour-party-gender-recognition-act-self-id-trans-people-pride/

Starmer did a chat on MN a while ago, where he was asked a question about how Labour would introduce self ID and also maintain/improve single sex spaces.

He didn't answer that question.

Labour supporters are so bad at hearing criticism the old lines are all they’ve got

It's the utter hypocrisy. Labour were warned, time and time and time again, by women who were side-lined at best, abused and threatened at worst. They would not listen - they insisted that they were right, and we were bigots and dinosaurs.

And now, when it has finally dawned on them that they might need us to win the GE, they are all wide-eyed innocence: "Oh that stuff we said. Or course that doesn't mean anything. Of course we'll support women." How stupid do they think we are?

It is irritating. I was quite pleased when Starmer took over as Corbyn wasn’t what I wanted.

It’s a shame for them as my vote has never been fixed on loyalty and easily swayed.

But they don’t want my vote, fine. Plus I look at Labour elsewhere and it just looks more hopeless.

It probably references anyone who does not live in a big, university city. The metropolitan middle classes, and the youth, are now the core Labour vote.

Nails it.

The metropolitan middle classes, and the youth, are now the core Labour vote

Which is why they are screwed and having to be nice to women of the boring old cunty type until the next GE. And why their lead in the polls may not translate into electoral victory. Their vote is highly concentrated into a small number of constituencies, and their core supporters skew young and therefore less likely to vote.

I don't think the Tories will hold the entire Red Wall, but I don't think it will return to Labour en masse either. There is not enough in Labour's current policies to appeal to a broad demographic, and the 'men can have cervixes' stuff makes them look ridiculous and untrustworthy, even to voters who don't care about women's rights.

If they had brainstormed for a year, I'm not sure they could have come up with a policy more likely to repel voters than rapists in women's prisons. Even the 'law and order, string them up' types hate it because it's giving rapists what they want. And yet Labour chose to vote against the amendment to the Scottish GRR that would have excluded rapists from self-ID. They have brought this on themselves.

Also, I think the Scottish situation is instructive, and troubling.

Labour whipped their MSPs to vote for the GRR (and, apparently, lied misspoke about it on national TV). That's pretty extreme legislation. There's a fair amount of speculation that Sarwar had to do this as most Labour MSPs opposed the bill/believed their constituents opposed it. The SNP is at least admitting there are issues, but Sarwar is still front and centre bigging it up. And he says that Starmer is in complete agreement with him (except for a few pesky details like whether it's within Holyrood's power to legislate and whether the lower age limit should be 16 vs 18).

Starmer MUST be clear about where UK Labour stands re women's rights to single-sex (not -gender) spaces, services, facilities, and accomodations - whether those plans are for protecting, eroding, eliminating, or ignoring them.

Exactly.

The idea that this is a Tory smear or a culture war started by the Tories is just nonsense.

There is so much evidence out there that Labour do intend to reform the GRA, Starmer is on video saying he intends to introduce self ID, Lisa Nandy thinks rapists should go to female prison.

I judge them on what they actually say.

Starmer MUST be clear about where UK Labour stands re women's rights to single-sex (not -gender) spaces, services, facilities, and accomodations - whether those plans are for protecting, eroding, eliminating, or ignoring them

Honestly, it's too late for me. I wouldn't believe or trust him at this stage if he did. And I say that as someone who rejoined Labour specifically to vote for him, as better for women than Nandy or Long-Bailey.

His front bench is packed with people who support self-ID and who believe that women are bigots for opposing it. And, as you say, the GRR is instructive, as is Starmer's behaviour when Rosie Duffield was abused by her colleagues. The latter is the absolute clincher for me. Starmer 'got it' on anti-Semitism: he understood how the party had become hostile for Jewish people. But he sees very similar behaviours aimed at women, and he does nothing. When someone shows you who they are....

Starmer has said, multiple times, that he believes the current proposals around Self ID " don't go far enough".

I wonder what that guy( is the new CEO of Stonewall) has been advising behind the scenes? He recently defected from the Conservatives to the Labour Party. This is has obviously been a stategic move in order to influence an incoming new government. Perhaps he's suggested they keep it quiet to deflect attention.

I'm a lifelong Labour voter who would find it very hard to vote Tory. How can I vote for a policy as nutty as sending asylum seekers to Rwanda? Or for a party that has constantly underfunded the NHS, the police, local authorities and social care to the extent that those institutions are not capable of doing the job they are supposed to do? Real people's lives have been harmed by Tory ideology; real people have died. It's not a small thing.

But it would absolutely stick in my throat to vote Labour after the way they've behave on the gender issue. It's not just that they have adopted the utterly lunatic and harmful policy of self-ID, it's that they have abused and belittled those of us who have campaigned against it. Look at the absolutely shameful way they treated Rosie Duffield. Look at the way they banned Labour Women's Declaration from party conference. Look at David Lammy calling us dinosaurs. Look at Russell-Moyle accusing JKR of "weaponising" her experience of domestic abuse. Look at Angela Rayner, Long-Bailey and the rest signing a charter to have gender-critical women expelled from the party.

And now, it turns out, Labour are desperate to attract the vote of the very women they have spent the past five years insulting. How can we just roll over and say "OK, we'll vote Labour"? It means giving up the only lever we have, which is the power not to vote for them and their stupid, ill-thought-out, misogynistic, homophobic policy. I am not promising Labour my vote until Rayner, Starmer and the rest of their supine front bench get down on their knees and deliver an abject, heartfelt apology for the way they've treated women in their own party for the past six years. And even then, frankly, I'd have to think about it.

I suggest that those in the Labour Party who are most behind gender ideology are those who came in via Momentum during the Corbyn years. That is certainly true of my MP Kim Johnson - who was a Momentum plant after Jewish Louise Ellman had been bullied out. She, and people like Nandy and Long Bailey and Nadia Whittome and Russell-moyle are all Corbynites.
Starmer is having to keep them on board because of the young activist base who joined under Corbyn.

I raised it with a door to door Labour representative.

They said it's only the top of the party that are 100% gender ideology. There lies the problem

I suggest that those in the Labour Party who are most behind gender ideology are those who came in via Momentum during the Corbyn years. That is certainly true of my MP Kim Johnson - who was a Momentum plant after Jewish Louise Ellman had been bullied out. She, and people like Nandy and Long Bailey and Nadia Whittome and Russell-moyle are all Corbynites.
Starmer is having to keep them on board because of the young activist base who joined under Corbyn

Not true of Angela Rayner or David Lammy, though, is it? Or Yvette Cooper.

And Starmer does not have to keep the Corbynites on board. He has chosen to take them on, on other issues - Brexit policy, anti-Semitism. Apart from the time early on that he mangled a reshuffle when weaker, and ended up saddled with Rayner, he has succeeded in facing them down.

Even if he didn't feel strong enough to oppose self-ID outright, he could have encouraged a free vote for Labour MSPs on the GRR and its amendments. And he could have spoken out against the Rosie Duffield abuse in general terms, without even addressing the cause of the abuse. And I don't remember anyone holding a gun to his head when he told Pink News that Labour would introduce self-ID. God knows, he is an accomplished enough fence-sitter when he wants to be.

Starmer is showing us what he believes, which is that Labour should support self-ID. Anyone who thinks otherwise at this stage is deluding herself.

That doesn't surprise me.

There is an unusually high number of senior Labour figures who have young trans relatives.

The Scottish situation is indeed instructive. And the reality is that GC women are just not worth enough to the Labour Party leader to spend any political capital on. They think we are cheap dates.

There will never be any political party that represents all my views. But I’m allowed go vote according to my self-interest, I don’t have to apologise for it, either.

For those who point to Tory policies on refugees and the NHS, I hope you put Labour policies under the same scrutiny. But for me, it all begins with the same question: if you can believe that men can become women, due to an inner, authentic ‘gender self’, what other absurdities are you willing to believe?

Helen Joyce once said that those who have supported a child’s transition as parents or relatives will be the last ones to abandon gender ideology. I think she’s right. Somebody like Thornberry will always choose this precious belief over my political interests. There can be no common ground, not for a long time.

Everything else aside, I could never vote for a man so painfully thick, he thinks a man can grow a cervix.

I know that is what he has said and therefore we have to take him at his word; it is just that I find it difficult to conceive how they believe this stuff. It all came in under Corbyn; it was he who started using pronouns; it was under him that many young local councillors were elected - all Momentum affiliated and all who ascribe to the typical woke agenda; use pronouns etc. He still has a committed base of party activists.

Not only trans identified young relatives, but those with children who are gay ( Yvette Cooper, for example) and are subsumed in queer politics.

I don't actually think that Starmer is a man of principle, or political integrity. He is a people pleaser and will do what he thinks he has to do in order to get elected. He's a bit like Boris Johnson in that respect, but without the wit or the loyal following.

I'd never expect a politician to criticise their own child. It must be difficult for those with queer-identifying kids, especially given how keen our merry rainbow friends are on convincing kids to go NC. I'd be happy if their politician parents just chose not to comment.

Equally, though, I expect anyone who believes themselves worthy of high office to take a broader view than the interests of their own family, and to be able to weigh up the competing needs and rights of different groups, instead of shouting bigots and dinosaurs at women.

Anderson ( current chair of Stonewall), who says he will support Labour at the next election, recently met Sir Keir Starmer to discuss business policy and said he was confident the opposition party leader would “do what he says”.

Key to his decision to abandon the Tories now is his belief, based on discussions with party insiders, that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will ramp up the so-called culture wars as a central part of his 2024 election strategy.

Anderson quit as the government’s LGBT adviser last year, claiming ministers were trying “to drive a wedge” between transgender people and gay, lesbian and bisexual people.He opposed the UK government’s decision to block a highly contentious gender recognition law, passed by the Scottish parliament, which made it easier for a person to legally change their gender. One Tory source said Anderson was “furious” about the government’s decision to block first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s “radical gender self-ID proposals”.

www.ft.com/content/0668efbd-ca9c-4b8b-a1c1-0c2adcd75348

Yes it’s a clear conflict of interest. on matters that are uncontroversial ( say like funding breast cancer treatment as your relative has breast cancer) that is less an issue ( although some might disagree) but where an issue is very controversial with differing opinions and a clash of rights personal stories should not be used imo

If you want to know what it’s like to live in a country that has a Trans supporting Anti-Women government,just look at the Let Woman Speak event in Hobart.The booing and hissing at a disabled elderly Lesbian,who btw nursed gay men during the aid’s crisis was the most disgusting behaviour yet.I’ve visited Tasmania and seen first hand the misogyny and abuse of women.Whatever your views on KJK she’s doing a powerful job of Letting Women Speak.People who criticise her while sitting at their keyboards should put their money where their mouth is and start their own campaign..