Starmer rowing back on self ID - what do we think?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

The Times is reporting in its live politics feed that KS has explicitly said Labour will not push for self ID without public backing. I know not everyone can access their content so here is a copied n pasted version: what do you think?

Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.

“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”

I don’t know why (and it’s very odd) but your posts have the effect of making me want to vote Tory even though I’ve never voted Tory in my life. Maybe it’s a super power.

Stella creasey is my mp , that statement id totally depressing.

Oh catch yerself on. I don't vote Tory or Labour, never have done so I've no horse in that race.

You want to vote Tory? Own it. But don't pretend you're doing it for women.

This!

You have no right to make that kind of statement just because people make a voting choice that you don't like.

Who the fuck do you think you are?

Or maybe I'm a Tory shill using reverse psychology? Are you that easily manipulated?

I wouldn’t say Im easy to manipulate but I’m not immune to it either. Mostly I’m just very contrary sometimes to my own detriment. But seriously It’s unlikely I’ll vote Tory - I’ll probably just spoil my ballot.

A relative of mine said 'I don't know how you can live with yourself' when I announced I would be voting Conservative for the first time in my life. I resigned from Labour in 2017 when Corbyn was elected.

Good lord. The state of this.

Because the tone of these posts tends to treat women as stupid or as liars.

I have been accused (not by you) of never having had any intention of voting Labour when, in fact, I have never voted Tory and I used to be a Labour party member. I - along with many other left-leaning women - have been trying to get Labour to listen to us for nearly a decade now, with fuck all success. A number of us were doxed or publicly abused for doing so. So I don't take kindly to people suggesting that I am a closet Tory.

Posters defending Labour tend to address women as if we are too stupid to notice the harms that the Tory government has done. We're not. It's just some of us feel that self-ID to be of such overwhelming importance that we need to prioritise keeping it off the statute book. I totally respect any poster who says that she feels differently, and that she must prioritise Labour's other policies. But I do not wish to be told I am stupid, or hectored, if I make another choice.

Interesting leak to the Telegraph:

"One advisor tells this paper that Sir Keir has been “spooked” by what happened to Sturgeon and privately suggests he will change tack. “I think he will change his stance – and he will use the Equality Act to dance around the issue of single-sex spaces like shelters and prisons.”"

Not a real change of heart. And yes the article is archived in the usual places

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/25/week-tide-turned-gender-war/

Yep you definitely make it easy for me to keep voting Tory. I first started because of not wanting IndyRef2 in Scotland, then genderwoo became another reason and I'm quite old so you naturally tend to become more conservative with a small c as you age....yep Labour/Libdem is lost to me.

Why are you so focused on 'the tories' whenever women suggest they cannot vote for Labour - due to their stance on Self ID and their stonewall capitulation? Genuine question.

Many of us are actually ex Labour party members and life-long Labour voters, but the craziness of gender ideology and the extremism of trans activists has caused many of us to question all of our old certainties and our old tribal allegiances. That tends to suggest not that we have 'shifted sides' but that we no longer view matters in such a rigid and binary🤔way. It is actually quite liberating.

You've not told us of your particular allegiance - but if it is ' Green' of Lib Dem then there is absoliutely no way they can be considered as worthy of a vote. I've really come to get a fel for the Lib Dems of late - and they are total fruit cakes in many respects - devoid of heart, but also of common sense; as for the Greens - they are totally lost in identity politics of the kind which actually run counter to the original ethos of the ecology movement.

To be honest, I've lost all respect for Kier Starmer. He has no integrity. It is just about being elected. He'll throw anyone under the bus. He's like Boris Johnson - but without the wit, and without the loyal following.

Starmer is nothing like Boris Johnson.
Starmer is a centrist. I always vote for the centre candidate.

Why are you so focused on 'the tories' whenever women suggest they cannot vote for Labour - due to their stance on Self ID and their stonewall capitulation? Genuine question

And it's so telling that they don't seem to be able to make a positive case for voting Labour. What - specifically - are the Labour policies that will deliver better lives for women and children? KS's 5 missions are fine, but where is the detail on how they will be delivered? He is apparently worried about the Tories nicking his ideas, but we're 18 months - at most - from the next GE now. He is leaving it very late to win anyone over.

Until we see some detail, the answer to 'Why should I vote Labour?' seems to be 'Because the Tories are crap'. That isn't enough, especially so soon after the Corbyn shambles, because it gives voters no confidence that Labour can deliver what is promised.

Labour will not attack vulnerable women and children as the Conservatives are. At the moment we have children who are asylum seekers living in hostels and many have disappeared into traffickers hands. We have children in private mental hospitals getting appalling levels of care. We have 16 and 17 year olds homeless on the streets. We have so many women and children who are being utterly screwed over and no one seems to care.

The entire point of the political process. Party says blah blah, electorate vote based on said blah blah.
And if blah blah doesnt come to pass, we vote them out next time.

Soz, dont know how to double quote,

What exactly do you think some of us have done for roughly 20 years.
Do you think we sat on our thumbs?
I dont know about anyone else on here but I'm over 100 emails to various labour members. They dont reply or if they do reply is a copy/paste bag of shit.
I even wrote directly to starmer in 2018 and 2019, not a word back.
I tried, this is on them now.

I agree with you that all these things need addressing. But look at the effect self-ID will have:

Mixed sex wards in MH hospitals cannot be challenged. There are already far too many mixed sex wards (they first started under New Labour btw, so this is not on the Tories), but at least it's possible to exclude men at the moment.

Mixed-sex dorms in homeless shelters

Mixed-sex hostels.

Every policy that could help women is undermined by self-ID.

Labour wont know who the vulnerable women are.

Everything else, ok so what will the other parties do to fix?
And how will they fund it.

This is the point being raised with Starmer.

You cannot on one hand make voter enticing noises about caring about the impact of poverty on women (and by extension their children) and reducing violence against women and girls, when at the same time you are making noises about women being a mixed sex group and removing their protections and identity for the benefit of men.

It makes it rather clear that it's a lot of incoherent marketing slogans rather than any actual care or value for or understanding of these supposed groups. If a party wants to tell me that it's concerned about poverty for women and to really address that problem, then it is going to have to be honest that they are talking about a sex based group, and are not actively crippling that group with one hand, while trying to help with the other.

Labour led the way on equal pay. But to press for equal pay you need accurate data to base a case on. A few highly paid transwomen could skew the figures in a group. Then either the problem becomes harder to spot for a specific group of women workers. Or the data is seen as unreliable and no one takes the equal pay issue seriously any more.

I'm someone who has lived through the past 13 years of Tory government and seen the damage its done to women. And now they're playing the at least the Tories know what a woman is card. Again. They've been saying that for years while they've continued with their TRA agenda. It's just more lies.

I'm also someone who's tired of Tory voters blaming everyone else for them voting Tory. Its your vote, your responsibility, own it.

And now they're playing the at least the Tories know what a woman is card. Again. They've been saying that for years while they've continued with their TRA agenda. It's just more lies.

How can it be true that the Tories have been saying this for years, when everyone agrees that they were themselves pushing self-ID under Theresa May? The issue didn’t come up in the 2019 GE, which was centred on Brexit and Corbyn. 2024 will be the first GE where Labour and the Tories have opposing policies on self-ID.