Starmer in favour of clarifying Equalities Act

[Apollo441]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/05/keir-starmer-backs-rishi-sunak-rewrite-equality-laws-women/

Behind a pay wall but basically says he backs Rishi Sunak in clarifying that sex means biological sex in the 2010 act. That's it isn't it? Game over for the Gender ideology crowd if they can't misrepresent the law and sow confusion.

He is still wibbling about 99.9% of women but he backs this then that is just hot air and he's come down on the side of reality.
I actually believe that with cross party backing the petition will succeed. Well done.

A spokesman for Sir Keir said: “Clarification is a good thing. We’ll look at what’s brought forward.”

That doesn't inspire confidence tbh. As so many women on the Relationships board say - look at his actions, not his words, he is not as good a man as you think. Those women are very wise.

I worry because Starmer constantly refers to maintaining 'safe spaces' and not ‘single-sex spaces' and those two things aren’t automatically the same thing.

Further worry about this reluctance to talk about 'single-sex spaces' comes from Steve Reed, Labour shadow minister:

'Steve Reed, the shadow justice secretary, told Times Radio that Labour supported safe spaces for biological women.

"I do believe that safe spaces for women like a women's refuge for instance, there are very good reasons why that should be for biological women," he said. "I don't think the debate is as polarised as people sometimes imagine. Of course, we need to protect women from those who might seek to abuse them and where that means biological women, yes, it must mean biological women primarily.”'

Is Labour’s current use of ‘safe spaces’ a misunderstanding of correct terminology or is it linguistic sleight of hand to sound like they support women always having single-sex spaces when they actually don’t support this?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/05/keir-starmer-backs-rishi-sunak-rewrite-equality-laws-women

Trouble with using 'primarily' is it generally means there are also other things on the list you are going to include.

The only possible non 'primarily' included people if that refers to biological women would be the ones of the only other sex on the planet aka men.

Making it all a load of rubbish.

Agree, brokendaughter. It's important to always note qualifiers. It's amazing how often they're used by the "be kind" brigade who are wanting to appease everybody.

Also, if Starmer cannot define 100% of one of the two sex classes, then he also cannot define 100% of the other sex class either. Which means he can't define 100% of the human race! How is this person fit to lead a country of them?

I suspect he supports Sunak's government making the biological definition of sex, because he can then refer to that. I'll bet he wants it done asap so it's over before the next election. It does not instill confidence in me of his abilities to make hard decisions when leading a country.

I also wonder if he's heard KJK is going to go up against him in his constituency and would be a relentless thorn in his side on this specific issue too.

I think Keir is a coward, so I want to see action, an apology to women for insulting us and throwing us under the bus for the past few years would be a start.

Cowardly may be good. Would he date block a simple clarification of language to ensure a piece of law means what Tony Blair’s government intended it to mean.

If he cannot he will look like a numpty.

Instead he may be hoping that the whole thing will slide through without anyone noticing. He will be lucky to get away with it. The backlash will be from his side.

I think apologies from politicians are worthless so I don't care about that. However although the headline says he backs Sunak I think Starmer's actual words are, in typical lawyer fashion, very carefully chosen. All he's committing himself to doing is looking at whatever is proposed.

That's still not good enough Labour, try again.

@aweegc said "I suspect he supports Sunak's government making the biological definition of sex, because he can then refer to that. I'll bet he wants it done asap so it's over before the next election. It does not instill confidence in me of his abilities to make hard decisions when leading a country."

Totally agreement. The key thing here is If the Tories get themselves together they will be bringing a Statutory Instrument to amend the Equality Act to mention biology as Sex Matters suggested. It is easily doable in the next year. That means a Parliamentary vote.
https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Briefing-for-MPs-on-the-Equality-Act-amendment.pdf

This will be a crucial moment. I think Labour will not oppose this. Because it is in their interest to have it settled by the Tories as you say. Then they can simply avoid dealing with it. Which is Starmer's preferred position. It puts them in a difficult position but I bet they will opt to abstain.

However how MPs react will be interesting. Who wants to go on record voting against biological sex? Some of the most left wing Labour, maybe, but even for them it is going to be a difficult call. Obviously Rosie will be voting for it and poss other Labour MPs too.

More to the point for the Tories it is a great wedge issue. If most Labour MPs abstain they can point at them and say Labour is still confused about biology. Even better this is a HUGE problem for the Lib Dems and the SNP. The Tories have a bunch of seats under threat there and the Lib dems are really divided. Likewise it could reignite more internal battles in the SNP and the Tories think they can actually make gains in rural Scotland.

If the Tories do this right they will aim to have the vote as close to the election as possible then sit back as other parties have huge infights and then trigger them all over again during the campaign. When the economy is so bad knowing what a woman is one of the best tactics they have.

Gosh, is he talking about trans issues again? Apparently nobody else is talking about it? Given the number of column inches he is filling on the topic then perhaps poor Starmer is the only person who is talking about it? I suppose this could explain why he feels it necessary to take both sides of the argument, like a thought exercise? He'll blow himself out eventually.

Starmer has not managed to defend his own female MP from bullying by his own party.

These are the actions (lack of) that tell me how much he cares about women's safety.

The day he defends Rosie Duffield's right to safety and an opinion is the day I consider giving Labour my vote again.

Either way he’s caught really, if Labour vote for this some of their members will be furious if they don’t women will be furious. I think he has to come firmly down on a side to have any credibility. Even if the amendments are made he will start coming under pressure to make further changes to dilute. The tories fixing it won’t actually be a “phew that takes it off my table” moment for him.

To be honest, as a labour politician, saying only very ambiguous things but then quietly supporting sex to mean, well, sex, is probably the best way to get elected. And I do very much want the tories out. Bland and palatable to everyone is Starmers usp. Whether it’s possible to balance on the fence is a different matter, but I think he’s made clear that he won’t make clear which side he’s on. I think we can probably trust him to make every effort to stay on that fence. My prediction is that under labour we will see a ban on conversion therapy but also a classification that sex means biological sex (started under the tories but approved by labour). They’ll paint this as supporting both women’s and trans rights. I’m sure both sides will be angry he’s not clearly on their side, but most of them won’t be angry enough to change their votes.

I meant clarification , though classification almost works.

Come on Kier, FFS you can do this..
With the cost of living and housing so high, economic prospects and social mobility so low, children and disabled people living in poverty and the NHS, schools and public services starved of funds by the Tories until they are on their absolute knees, I really really want to give Labour my vote with a clear conscience.

I don’t care about politicians’ apologies either at this point, all the main political parties are wildly misogynistic, and the Tories were proposing legal self ID for the UK just a couple of years ago.

I just want Labour to say that they will protect single sex women’s spaces in a reformed equality act. I want all the parties to commit to that as the basic fucking minimum for deserving any woman’s vote in 2024.

If it is done by the Tories before the election then much the better (that can be their apology for the harms caused to women on their watch) and that will hold all the other Westminster parties’ feet to the fire. Then we will need commitments by all of them to review the GRA as to what it’s even for, if it doesn’t change legal sex any more.

Redefining SSE as safe spaces, and introducing a category of biological woman is a risky strategy long term, because there's a good chance they'll be in government soon.

Then they'll have to fight women when we notice that SSE have disappeared, and they've renamed women as 'biological women' and continue to see us as a subset of women. Istead of calling us 'cis', they are calling us 'biological', and presumably think we should be in a class along with nonbiological women when we don't need safe spaces.

They arent solving the problem, just renaning us and kicking the problem down the road for a bit.

As long as the "primarily" is there it's useless.

I want a manifesto commitment to sex means biological sex in the Equality Act, a commitment to stop anyone telling children they are born in the wrong body and a commitment to stop affirmation in schools. Also parents must have a right to see what sex education children are getting at school.

If Labour abstain on changes to the Equality Act that wont be good enough and I want to see them push for action on this before the election.

He’ll have to decide

He can’t do 99.9% aren’t talking about it

Being bland won’t help him avoid making a decision

I want Labour to demonstrate that they understand the problem, not passively go along with a word change in the hope that the topic is dropped.

At the moment, Starmer appears to think the public isn't progressive enough, and in time will be ready to acccept that sex is irrelevant and gender is important. Hes waiting for the plebs to catch up.

Pleeeese can we see Thornberry and Nandy discussing this

Yep he’s not to be trusted. Labour have been out of power for so long he’ll say anything at this point.

The left made a useful idiot and fool.out of me.

I can now see that Keir is a male supremacist as are the left, they have never had a woman leader, and note Harriet Harman and Angela Rayners have links to men who want to cause harm.

All politicians are sadistic, the left are not as honest as the right about this, hence the left would defend those murdering children because they are Christian and support those who harm 9 year old. I saw this pattern with grooming gangs in the left too, if it's 🌈 or Muslims they always pick the sadistic side and defend those hurting children with some kind of spin.

The left are also miserable, they pretend that they are full of fun and look deep and behind the curtains it's all seedy pretend, they are miserable and fake as anything in my experience, full of high heights and deep lows.

To be honest, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a Labour leader who actually wants to win an election. I found a lot of Labour activists were quite comfortable in opposition where they could make noise without having to compromise. How high up the chain that attitude goes I don't know but my guess is that it's shared by a number of MPs and even shadow ministers. Which, to get to my point, is why I've come round to thinking that Starmer will be dreading this going to a parliamentary vote as it would demonstrate to the whole electorate that he is not in control of his party.

Wouldn't it be great if it was clarified re biological sex.

Then and only then will we start to get accurate statistics proving TP are indeed the most marginalised group in society, instead of grey, woolly areas where sex and gender are interchangeable. Surely they would welcome this?

Not to the point of saying anything then overriding it after.

If he does that women are fucked quite frankly. Not language I usually use but anything that takes us towards an NZ style gender ideology dominating is very concerning.

I agree a vote will force it out it into the open a bit more though.