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.”

He's not saying, 'I now realise I was wrong about the trans issue and have changed my mind about the morality of men in women's sports, buggering up teenagers' bodies and all the rest.'

Nope, he's saying, 'I have suddenly clocked that pushing the trans issue is a massive vote-loser, look at Nicola, so I'll pop it on the back burner for a while.'

Yeah...no.

C-, must try harder.

Don't get me wrong, it is for me now as well, because it's a women's rights issue.

What I meant was, with all the major problems the country has experienced over the last 15 years or so and is continuing to experience today, what on earth made people within the Labour Party think, "But you know what really is the most important priority right now? Making it easier for trans people to get a piece of paper saying they've changed sex even though they haven't, and to use single sex spaces and compete in sports for the opposite sex! Tackling poverty and knife crime and fixing the NHS are of secondary importance compared to this!"

This.

It's ironic that the political grouping that loves purity spirals is so lacking in principle when it comes to getting elected.

I just hope that if it does nothing else, this fiasco teaches Starmer and Labour to be honest and not talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Yes I was going to say the same. The other thing is Starmer might not be the leader for ever. Someone like Nandy could take over.

And ironically, @RosaBonheur, TRAs love to use all those other serious and pressing problems to make whataboutery points.

Yeah I agree, my impression with Starmer is that he was never that interested in this issue and thinks of it as a culture war thing and distraction. So as you say outsourced his thinking to the young policy advisor types - who in the Labour Party are mainly hardline TWAW.

I don’t think he’s a gender critical convert or anything but just very focussed on winning the next election. The Scottish shitshow has made it clear that the public aren’t onside with self ID, so I can’t see him pursuing it now. Imagine he will want to neutralise the issue so the Tories don’t capitalise on Labour being divided over it.

@Tinysoxxx This has always confused me but MPs while representing their constituency are not really representatives and not delegates - nor could they truly be, since under FPTP they often don't have the majority vote. They are supposed to adhere to party policy since at a GE that is what voters decide on (unless voting tribally eg "I've always voted Labour/Tory/Green" etc). However some of their party policies may militate against constituency and constituents' interests eg a local hospital closure because of NHS reforms. Or, in the case of the Iraq war, go against public feeling and the MP's only feelings.

There's no perfect system - proportional representation seems logical but disassociates MP from a constituency.

Hear hear.

Amen to that

Are there any trantrums from the true believers in the party? If there's no pushback from that quarter, then it is an empty gesture and they know it. Is there any support for Rosie? What will Labour say when we get our debate on the Equality Act?

I'm not buying it, not yet. Not by a long chalk.

Nailed it.

He’s a kite flyer of the worse variety.

This is what happens when you don't have any independent thought and just go with the crowd

You can't trust people who ignore their own actual thoughts and just go with the crowd. Kier Starmer always knew that you cannot make a man a woman, he was just too cowardly and opportunistic (for the virtue) to say so

Agree that the GRA needs repealing.

The men's rights activists have pushed this too far now.

As for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party; he needs to state that ONLY women have cervixes and Lisa Nandy needs to retract her opinion from 2020 that male rapists who identify as women should be in women's prisons.

Men cannot be and are never women.

Human beings cannot change sex.

Children are not born in the wrong bodies.

These facts are not right wing beliefs.

Yes I agree. In an ideal system it would be representative but we have what we have and then bodge it further with referendums and look how they turn out!

Exactly. It's a conflict between women's rights and what trans people want, right?

So when it's a women's rights issue, it actually is a huge issue because 50% of us are women, and many of the other 50% care about women because their mothers and daughters and sisters and wives and girlfriends are women. But TRAs are telling women that single sex spaces for women and women's sports etc aren't a big issue compared to all these more pressing matters.

But when the same issue is framed as a trans rights issue, it suddenly becomes the most pressing issue despite the fact that trans people are actually a tiny, self-selected minority who already have the same rights as everyone else.

Huh?

Make it make sense!

It’s got to be a good sign that not supporting Self ID is now an allowable position in the Labour Party. There must be some very different conversations happening behind the scenes than a few months ago.

It may not have come from a gender critical conversion where Keir Starmer now agrees with us on everything, but that’s not a realistic outcome. It shows that Self ID has moved from being seen as an easy progressive win to being seen as toxic. This is definitely positive.

The TRAs won’t give up lobbying inside the Labour Party and neither should women, as nothing is guaranteed for the future. But it shows how damaging the whole Scottish thing has been for the Self ID cause.

This is pure electoral calculation. Just think what the messaging today would have been had not Isla Bryson and Barbie Kardashian been in the spotlight, had Sturgeon not resigned, had there been no immediate emergency with the Scottish GRR act.
Do we really think had things been "quiet" in Scotland, Starmer today would have been this vocal? I know he wouldn't.
No, the VERY BEST we can hope for is that Starmer is either TWAW lukewarm or borderline against, and his political antennae are quivering to tell him to do the minimum possible to placate his trans activist base and pro TWAW contingent in the shadow cabinet.
However if he wins in 2024, there will be a cementing of Stonewall within the party and institutions, and the TWAW ethos will solidify further in British institutions.
Ready for a Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner or Clive Lewis successor in a few years to flip the switch seamlessly.

I think that all the issues we are seeing are under a Conservative government. They will say the right things but I don’t trust them to do the right things because they’ll just exploit it as a culture war for votes. At the moment, self ID has fallen into that bracket.

Looking at the current government’s record on women’s rights, they just don’t take things seriously with actual action.

So I will not be casting my vote based on this issue - there are so many other things going wrong - but I’m not worried about Labour’s position on this. I’m worried about what’s happened and happening under the Tories.

He always sounded like he had a gun to his head when he had to say all the stupid unscientific shite.

I actually voted for him to be Labour leader because he seemed like the most moderate candidate on this issue, so it would be nice if it paid off.

This is promising but I want to see some action. Actually meeting with GC groups to hear the arguments, allowing them and LGB alliance to have stalls at conference, defending Rosie Duffield and coming down hard on those bullying her ( an apology to her from KS would be nice too!) and a proper manifesto statement on this issue.

Then I’ll look again at Labour as a party to vote for.

I’d love to vote Labour again so I hope they can show this us more than words they’ll renege on.

These days, whenever Starmer (and, to be fair, other politicians) say something I end up wondering what they really mean and what their real intentions are. “Taking the public with you” could mean anything really. It could mean doing the sort of consultation that Sturgeon did where you listen only to favoured groups (though hopefully Labour have learned that doesn’t work), it could mean preaching, guilt tripping and talking about the most vulnerable using dodgy statistics, or something the new Stonewall chair has in mind where you get what looks like a compromise solution which in reality still disadvantages women. We all hope it means they won’t do anything unless the public are happy with it but I don’t trust them not to try and get changes made when most people (and the media) are looking the other way.

They have campaigned on “culture war” issues because they have nothing else to offer. They are not going to fix poverty or save the NHS and everyone knows it. It is all straight out of the US Democrats handbook.

It's a positive move. As others have said, disappointing that he sees protecting women's rights & child safeguarding as a vote loser rather than the ethical thing to do and slightly worried that he feels public opinion needs to shift rather than acknowledging that cosying up with dodgy organisations like Mermaids and Stonewall has caused this shitshow.
But some progress over that golden bridge imho.

Well, quite. He didn't give a rats arse for public opinion until he saw how his career was likely to end.