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.”

And that we are stupid for not believing Labour now, but also stupid for believing what they have said in the very recent past.

Perhaps one of the posters scolding us could clarify exactly how long a Labour commitment now lasts? 1 week? 1 month? A few hours? Because, only today, their Shadow Justice Minister was referring to a convicted rapist as 'she' and defending Scottish Labour's support for the GRR Bill. So do I believe her, or Keir Starmer from yesterday? Clarifications gratefully received.

No-one is happy voting Tory at this point, or abstaining/spoiling their ballot. Indeed there is massive cognitive dissonance to even consider not voting Labour after 13 years of Tory shitshow. That's just how disorientating Labour refusing to nail their colours to full protection of female rights and sex class protected spaces is.

Starmer isn't bothered about losing a few votes. He's bothered about ending up with the same fate.

You’re right and it’s interesting after some Labour posters on here going on about polls and it not featuring that he has finally got it.

It ended a supposedly good political career and easily could again.

Sure, but that still puts them ahead of Party B, which has committed to self-ID, doesn't it?

I think you’re supposed to not care, and just vote Labour anyway. You are far too self-absorbed caring what a woman is, you should be worrying about everything else. 🤨

I think some are terrified that this is a much bigger issue than is being reflected in the polls at the minute, and that a silent majority of women will vote for women’s rights at the next election. Starmer won’t do anything for women and campaigners know it, so the tactic instead is to make people feel like they’re both selfish to prioritise safe spaces and gullible to believe who it’s safer with.

He's said he's going to balance women's rights with trans wants so it's a massive no. He can give up his own rights and those of other men if he's that bothered but I very much doubt he is.

“Taking the public with you” makes it sound like he still thinks it’s the right thing but the public are stupid and backwards and will need to be educated about why it’s the right thing to do

he can fuck off

I think some are terrified that this is a much bigger issue than is being reflected in the polls at the minute, and that a silent majority of women will vote for women’s rights at the next election

And rightly so. Look at recent history:

1. Penny Mordaunt loses the 1st 2022 Tory leadership contest, despite starting as a frontrunner and Tory darling, because she can't say what a woman is.
2. The Scottish GRR Bill leads to Sturgeon's downfall but, even more astonishingly, IMO, to a majority of Scots supporting Tory Westminster in blocking it.
3. In the US, despite multiple pundits and polls downplaying the important of the Supreme Court over-turn of Roe v Wade in the run-up to the Nov 2022 elections (the theory was that lots of voters cared about it, but not enough to sway their votes), it is now thought to have been a major factor in the Dems holding the Senate and only losing the Congress by a whisker.

Worth noting too that this behaviour from the passionate left voters that if you don't vote how they do you're evil, ends repeatedly in over inflated predictions and everyone walking around saying 'how did Labour not win?'

Because no one would tell you the truth about their voting intentions, mate. Not wanting to have to deal with your behaviour if they were open with you.

I will wait for a Labour MP to come on here and actually have a web chat with women on this.

Not the usual: submit questions, we'll pick the easiest and nicest, have a SPAD design answers, and cut and paste on the day before running

Not the usual 'you can ask two things on this subject and that's it'

Show me actual willingness to listen, engage, take on board and say things other than 'be kind' and other ways of saying 'put males first you bitches' and I might consider reconsidering my vote. Possibly. But yes, repeal the GRA is what it would take.

I agree with 90% of what you are saying but we have to vote someone in and I am never going to vote Tory again as long as I breathe. I will never forgive them for Brexit.

I genuinely do think we can trust them with the NHS more than the Tories. The last time the NHS functioned reasonably well was under Gordon Brown.

And I think Keir is reasonably sound. He's trying to get elected atm which is a very different thing to making decisions when you are in power.

trying to get elected atm which is a very different thing to making decisions when you are in power
That's exactly what we're worried about.

He's trying to get elected atm which is a very different thing to making decisions when you are in power.
Don't we know it! That's why we don't trust him.

Quite.

'Don't frighten the horses, do it quietly and deceitfully later when they've voted you in and they can't stop you' was a beloved strategy of the Blair years.

Yes I totally get that but we can't tolerate a Tory government any more surely?

And therein lies the dilemma...

It’s not the same government tho?

Yes the Tories have been in power continuously but it was Theresa May’s Government who proposed self ID and Boris Johnsons’ Government that sacked it off.

Ultimately we all vote in our constituencies, and we vote for an MP, not a prime minister, so while I’ve never voted Tory in my life, I would actually consider voting for, say, Miriam Cates, if I lived in her constituency. I would happily vote Rosie Duffield in her constituency.

But I don’t live in Canterbury or Penistone, I live in a very, very safe Labour seat and so I will write ‘There is No Such Thing as a Woman With A Penis’ on my ballot.

As I have the last 3 GE.

The sad thing is that I agree with this. Half my family are in mainland Europe, so we are very affected by Brexit. I work in NHS, so I see the disasters caused by a decade of real-terms Tory cuts every day.

But for me, self-ID is so fundamental that I cannot vote for any party that supports it, or that I believe is likely to introduce it. I respect everyone's rights to prioritise differently, but I am tired of Labour activists (not meaning you, @Himalayanclouds65 ) hectoring me for making self-ID my priority.

It sounds positive but will KS allow GC women’s groups at conference etc? I suspect the Barbie Kardashian news on top of the Scottish rapist has made Labour reevaluate what self ID means, whether the problems will go away (they won’t) and how well it’s going to go down with voters (badly).

Are Labour Women's Declaration not allowed a stand at the conference?

I think it's an interesting move. I hope this means that there are parts of the Labour Party who have remembered that they are there to represent the electorate and not frogmarch them into a gender cult they never understood or signed up to.

But I'm chalking it up to lip service until we see some action.

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.

Well, I've learnt something new. I always thought politicians were supposed to look after/make better this country on our behalf. I didn't realise they thought they were the new aristocracy and we were still the peasants. I always thought Labour was for the workers, the many, not the few.

Voted Labour all my life, I would never vote Tory.

However, I don't care that self ID is a single issue, I shan't be voting Labour. Not after their treatment of Rosie Duffield and tolerance of Lloyd Russell Mole bullying Miriam Cates.

I need written commitments and recognition of what a woman is before I will ever consider doing so.

What's going on in Leicester?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/23/labour-tells-19-leicester-councillors-they-cannot-stand-in-may-election

For the record, I've no idea. But it's made me think. They've been ruthless getting rid of wrong thinkers in the LP recently. I'd be a mug to not think the might also stretch to people who are GC. So, if Starmer is sincere, where are the trantrums from the tras in the party?

... you have to carry the public with you.

In the words of Bertold Brecht (more or less): Would it not be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?