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 look at some of the cabinet members responses on women’s issues and just shake my head in disbelieve that anyone thinks the Tories really give a shit about women.

They’ve spotted the trans issue as a culture war, they’ve jumped on it and will bin it come the other side of the election (until the next election comes rolling around in 2029).

@SirChenjins this made me laugh He climbing back up onto the fence quicker than a rat up a drainpipe

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@Believeitornot the Tories are hugely opportunistic and mostly misogynistic but I think some of them are genuinely gender critical e.g. Badenoch.

It is about the only thing I agree with her on, mind!

But whilst I don't think most of them care about it, I do also think most Tory 'big beasts' would give very short shrift to the idea that TW genuinely are W in all senses. They're opportunistic as hell but also pragmatic and not always particularly ideological.

Doesn't mean I will vote Tory ofc

That is a very very good point. I think it was Kemi that convinced Rishi to call Sturgeon’s bluff. There is no Kemi in the Labour Party.
none of this would have happened with labour in power!

I think Badenoch is nasty with it, quite frankly. Yes she’s gender critical but is also nasty about trans people - why is the latter necessary? It just isn’t.

That is the problem that I have. You can get plenty of respectful gender critical people, but the current crop of Tories just aren’t it.

I sadly concur, you can just about slide a cigarette paper btwn the major parties. If Rory Stewart ever returns to lead the Tories, he'll pick up where his mentor Teresa May wanted to go with Self ID. Ditto risk with Penny Mordant. The only candidates in the party likely truly committed to GC attitudes, anti Self ID, are Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman.

This clip illustrates the problem.

Link to tweet with Julia Hartley Brewer interview with Labour MP discussing tackling MVAWG

Labour are in a total mess over this & until they can talk like actual human beings capable of understanding the impact of their chosen words, they're not going to convince many women that they can be trusted.

This MP still chose to call a convicted double rapist 'she' in the context of trying to discuss Labour's plans to tackle MVAWG. The absurdity of this makes them look stupid. But the impact of it demonstrates their contempt for women, at the expense of men they're too focused on for what they see as signalling their moral superiority.

he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again.
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."
there should be a reset of the situation.
What does this word salad actually mean (if anything)?

No one is under any delusions about the Tories. But the fact is that they have committed not to bring in self-ID (having previously supported it) whereas Labour are on record as say that they will. KS said that explicitly here

Half the shadow cabinet are on record as believing that there is no such thing as a woman/women who want single-sex spaces are bigots etc.

KS has said nothing to indicate that Labour don't intend to bring in self-ID. He is now just saying that they won't do it immediately. Even if KS has genuinely had a change of heart, the vociferous pro-TRA support in his party may mean that he has no choice.

So please don't patronise us, or imply that we don't understand our own interests.

I'm still not convinced. It'll take more than that for me to want Labour to win the next election.

Having previously supported it, what makes you think that they wouldn’t swing back to it again….

That is the absurdity of your position. Because they’re currently where you like, you’ll vote for them but given they change leaders as often as the weather changes, who knows where they could be in a few years.

It's far from ideal but its time for pragmatism imho. Supporting feminism is also about women having decent childcare provision, decent pay, a functioning NHS, in particular good quality pre- and post- natal care, safe policing, a functioning transport system, as well as the all important safe spaces just for women.

Can you point to any actual policies that Labour have that will do those things?

They have no intention of reversing Brexit. Where is the money going to come from to do all of those things?

How can we trust them on the NHS if they don't even understand basic biology like only women have a cervix.

I'm not fan of the Tories, I've never voted Tory in my life. But the only policy of the Labour party that I actually know is that they intend to introduce self ID the only change to that now is that it isn't apparently a priority.

If Labour wants to get my vote they need to explicitly roll back on that and explain how they are going to make my life better.

They also need to stop telling women that we are transphobic and expelling us or telling us we are not welcome in the Labour Party for knowing that men who wear dresses are not actually women.

The money will come from where it always comes from. Do you know how a government works?

And don’t come at me with “they broke the economy in 2008”, please. Such economically illiterate nonsense.

Self ID is not a party political issue - and that’s why it’s dangerous to cast your vote on that alone. Because both sides are not ideological on this - as you can name politicians across the divide who take various positions on this.

He’s saying it to buy votes. We know his beliefs and attitude to women’s rights. For all his intelligence he’s not a very wise man. I wouldn’t trust him about anything. That said, I can’t think of any decent, trustworthy politician at all. How has it come to this?

And the thread got derailed as usual. It’s amazing how many people seem terrified of women prioritising women’s rights, and desperate to tell us how wrong we are to do this.

That is the absurdity of your position

Ah yes, that's definitely the way to win women over.

Look, my choice is :
Party A - has committed not to introduce self-ID
Party B - has committed to introduce self-ID

Both of them can change their minds. But, if my number 1 concern is to avoid self-ID, I'd be a bit absurd to choose Party B, wouldn't I?

As a woman who sees a government making life harder for women - I just don’t understand why you’d vote for the very government who have overseen this mess.

It is such backwards thinking.

I'm afraid this is as good as it's gonna get. A vague unspecified "promise" that legal changes on gender are not gonna be a priority. Starmer is going to expect that to be "good enough" to get women's votes, tacitly criticising women who aren't placated by this. And if GC women fail to come out in numbers to assure a Labour win, you'll only have yourselves to blame for more poor Tory policy re women and families.

I concur with your logic, but I suppose I haven't been scolded enough yet, I might see the light eventually.

Why is everything he says such a word salad

It’s meaningless

Party A has committed “for now because they want to win your vote”….

Will he deal with bullying and structural bias within the party that shames, harassed or otherwise holds back or demonises anyone - especially women - for holding gender critical views.

If he won't, he's not serious and he will just let his underlings 'deal with the problem'.

Institutionalised sexism needs calling out on this one Im afraid.

No, I reckon that like most people, he's never believed that women have penises and men have cervixes / cervices (You know what, I have absolutely no idea how to pluralise cervix!)

I reckon that just like most men, he hasn't actually put that much thought into the whole situation, because it really hasn't affected us that much as a sex.

I reckon that just like most of the center and the left he's gone along with the whole TWAW thing because it's been conflated with LGB and so therefore it's the next logical progressive thing.

And I reckon that he thought he'd get more votes from non-GCs than GCs.

What I don't reckon is that he really believes a bloke in a dress is a woman, because he's an obviously intelligent person who really seems to like a fact.

It took Mumsnet to make me TERFy. Until about this time last year I didn't know enough to have a position either way. There are a lot of people, both men and women for whom the first time they really thought about this stuff was the whole Scottish Prisons thing.

Do I know whether Starmer is one of these people? No.

But I'll be voting labour either way, because while this issue is hugely important to me (I may be male but I have teenage daughters), I also have a pressing need to eat, and house myself, and stay warm.

So I'll be voting for whoever can get the Conservatives out. And then I'll continue doing whatever I can to move the needle with whoever is in government.

Self ID is absolutely a party political issue when the Labour Party expels members for saying men cannot be women.

The Labour Party do not deserve the vote of women. They have treated us too badly.

If they can lie not only women can have cervixes. I do not believe another word they say.

If their front benchers can stand and advocate for rapists in women's prisons they have lost their moral compass. They will not keep the most vulnerable women safe from harm. They support state sanctioned rape to protect the rapists feelings ffs.

If they can call women rights hoarding dinosaurs for daring to discuss these issues then they show their misogyny and they show that they dgaf about women.

It is Labour's fault that they have lost my vote not mine.

And don't you dare lecture me on how I should cast my vote. I owe them nothing.