Janice Turner Interview with Miriam Cates

[Igneococcus]

I don't see this shared yet. Not a great headline.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/38beb92a-1ffc-4370-a3db-0f58457afc07?shareToken=956961088b270d94282c7f20573e8568

Bit worrying that she sees her rapid ascent in politics as divine intervention.

Cates has ascribed her rapid ascent to divine intervention. “If you want to take a spiritual aspect, you could say it’s a series of quite extraordinary coincidences. Or, if you have a theological viewpoint, maybe it’s meant to be.”

The meat of the article is much better though. I think she answers very well for herself

Yeah, the divine intervention stuff is a but hmmm. And I don't like the way"cultural marxism" is a catch all for everything bad. It feels like a meaningless term/invented enemy which gives the impression the things people attribute to it (eg gender ideology) are also an invented problem when they're not.

"Cultural marxism" was a terrible term for her to have used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory - not clear to me whether she meant it in that sense (as the wiki page says "Apart from any conspiratorial usage, the phrase 'cultural Marxism' has been used occasionally in accepted academic scholarship to mean the study of how the production of culture is used by elite groups to maintain their dominance") but it's a terrible misjudgment to have used the phrase at all.

I agree with her on lots of things, disagree on some. The idea that a Christian sees God as being an active cause of events in her life doesn't surprise or bother me.

There are some uncomfortable truths in there. Such as the downsides of having babies older (don't leap on me, I've done it and I'm one of those who put it off to have a career etc), and the fissures in safeguards with accessing abortion pills at home. She's also right about how women are viewed if they don't work and the unfairness of taxation on a household, and the real world impacts that has on parents.

She's correct about this - another uncomfortable truth:

"She points out no one asks Rishi Sunak how his Hindu faith informs his politics, and that the SNP leadership contest interrogated Kate Forbes’s Christianity far harder than Humza Yousaf’s Islamic identity."

She's right about the guidance with the one sentence featuring the term "gender identity" in it, and the damage that's done in schools.

Just watched the link in that article to LRM’s fury in the HoC, calling Cates “transphobic”. It struck me that accusing anyone who is pro-women’s rights of being “transphobic” just illustrates that you can’t support both sides at the same time, because their rights cannot be balanced.

Maybe we should start calling TRAs “womenphobes” because if we’re transphobes for wanting to keep men out of our spaces, by the same logic they must be womenphobes for wanting to invade them.

Cultural marxism is an antisemitic term that should never be used.

And on Cates herself, she’s been in the party of government for 3.5 years, so it’s a bit rich hearing her talk about the need to help UK women have more babies. I mean, in a cost of living catastrophe with uncontrolled inflation, after a decade of austerity, is it any fucking wonder? These people make me want to throw things.

I think she's a brave woman. OK you might not always agree with her, but she raised her head above the parapet on GC issues when people like Jess Phillips (and most of the rest the Left Wing) refused to support women.

Oh yes, I’m grateful for anyone brave enough to swim against the Stonewall tide. But I wish there were more women from the left-wing doing it.

Since this thread is being immediately derailed by the left calling her antisemitic (oh the irony), I thought this recent article about Cultural Marxism in the Jewish Chronicle might be of interest.

www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/is-the-term-cultural-marxism-really-antisemitic-5N7ZTnWmD99KUd4bipdC3j

She is amazing. I thought JT did a pretty good job of remaining balanced and fair in that.

Cates is such an ‘answer to my prayers’ - mum, biology teacher, MP, tenacious, articulate, poised and totally committed to stopping this social disease… I (an agnostic) have actually wondered if there could be a divine hand in her role in all this! 😂

Everything she writes or says packs a punch.

Literally no one on this thread has called her antisemitic.

@MelaniaT So this isn't calling her an anti-semite?

No, it's calling the term "cultural marxism" antisemitic, quite clearly.

PP has linked to an article in the JC which warns that "[Cultural marxism] is not necessarily antisemitic but it is often used in antisemitic ways, to signal an antisemitic way of thinking. One simply cannot escape that it is, and has long been, used as a signal for an anti-Jewish conspiracy. To this end, if public figures want to use this tainted phrase, they should understand the baggage that comes with it, and its multiple interpretations. MPs were emailed an Antisemitism Policy Trust briefing to try to ensure that these incidents did not occur. Andrew Percy MP, the Conservative Vice-Chair of the party, wrote in this very publication about the term. There are many ways of conveying meaning. Anyone using the phrase "cultural Marxism" has a duty to explain, in detail, what they mean when they say it – it might just be easier finding another form of words."

This is exactly the point I make in my initial post on the thread- even if she doesn't mean the phrase in its antisemitic sense, it's poor judgment to use it given how it's commonly understood.

None of this means Cates is an antisemite and no one on the thread has said she is.

Noone calls out Sadiq Khan and Humza Youssaf for their devout Muslim beliefs, yet Tim Faron, Kate Forbes and now Miriam Cates have fallen foul of institutional anti-Christian attitudes from the elites running things.

It was absolutely disgusting what happened to Faron in particular, and Forbes suffered massive unreasonable pressures. No doubt Cates, who is even more evangelical than these two, would absolutely face an "Anyone But Miriam" campaign from leftist MSM and the powers at the top of the Tory party.

I'll put my house on Cates never making the final two of any leadership contest.

My main criticism of her is that she's active in the party of government that over the past 13 years has done more to destroy family finances, choices and resources via austerity, being asleep at the wheel while trans activism and child/schools safeguarding issues have crystallised, and failing totally on NHS and especially housing.

For me, there are only two candidates who can do anything with the moribund Tories, Cates and Badenoch. Braverman is a busted flush, and the likes of Jonny Mercer, Rory Stewart, Jeremy Hunt etc would only continue the ethic-less direction of modern Conservatism.

God help us, but my money on the next Tory leader is...Penny Mordant.

Since most people won’t know about that usage/ connotation and will simply think of is as what the two words put together mean - a Marxism spread culturally, rather than through political process/revolution, it is a stretch to chide Cates for using the term.

I remember someone putting the case forward that because the Catholic Church had been using the phrase ‘gender ideology’ for a long time, that anyone using the phrase gender ideology would be understood as anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality because of its association with Catholicism.

Cates explains her positions pretty clearly. I'm not sure she joined the right party, though - many of the things she rightly rails against, such as the ludicrous way the child benefit cap and taxation of couples work, were introduced by the Tories. But I can understand why she wasn't attracted to the other parties. Some of the photos were a bit OTT - a political interview shouldn't need to be followed by a list of credits about the stylist, clothes and shoes designers, etc.

I look forward to my photoshoot.
Shoes, care of TKMaxx
Suit, care of M&S
Hair, care of Cosa The Barber, lol.

Yes - and a photo perched on the edge of a desk. Can you imagine an up-and-coming man being asked to pose like that?

As explained above, she's been briefed on it so should know very well how it's understood.

I think it's incredibly inappropriate that Turner asked her if she thought "abortion is a sin".

Turner taking this term "sin" from inside Cates' religion (it's not a legal term and clearly is meant in the Christian sense) to bait her into discussing a legal and political issue in religious terms is not ok, because everyone has beliefs. It's completely unfair to quiz her on her personal religious beliefs when Cates wasn't using them to argue a political position, and as Cates points out further down, "no-one asks Rishi Sunak how his Hindu faith informs his politics".

To insinuate that someone's most personal philosophical or religious beliefs mean that they can't be impartial suggests that no person with any religious or philosophical beliefs should be in charge of anything, lest they lose all sense of self-control and propriety.

The whole gender ideology/gender critical thing has strengthened my feelings around religious and philosophical freedom of belief, and the worrying thing about planting the idea that someone's religion or beliefs makes them inherently biased in their professional life is that this is exactly the argument TRAs make to shut down women's concerns and get them fired.

I thought the photo of the group of "New Conservatives" was quite illustrative of the way the right manage to work with whoever's necessary to get stuff done, while the left destroy each other with purity tests. (I can't imagine someone like Cates actually wanting to spend time in the same room as Gullis and Anderson for the fun of it.)

I'm afraid she's now (if she wasn't already) a target for the left.

Cultural Marxist usage, her aversion to home abortion pills, her enthusiasm to reduce the abortion time limit, her inability to state whether she'd have supported gay marriage, her seeming over emphasis on mothers given options other than only work, her zero tolerance on trans in schools and highlighting safeguarding issues thereof, will be grist to the mill to the identarian grievance mongers.