Labour canvasser today

[SirSamVimesCityWatch]

I'm in one the constituencies with a by-election coming up.

Just had a labour canvasser (woman, mid/late fifties) knock to ask if I was voting. I said yes I would be.

She asked if I knew who I was voting for. I asked if she knew what a woman was. I told her I was a single issue voter and that was the only issue that was going to decide how I voted.

Her response: "I believe a woman is anyone who believes themself to be a woman".

I told her in that case I have nothing else to say to her, and closed the door.

I would have loved to have actually put some of the issues to her (rapists in prisons, assaults in mixed sex spaces, including schools, destruction of women's sports etc) but my heart was already racing and I knew it would be like talking to a brick wall anyway.

But anyway - at least that's a clear pile in the eye for the whole 'it doesn't come up on the doorstep' nonsense.

So, I'm either voting Tory or SDP.

Why will he listen when he is in power? He has made clear where his personal sympathies lie. The best we can hope is that the sensible tendency (which seems to be one person at the moment, Rachel reeves) will restrain him.

Rachel Reeves is going to be dealing with her own issues. There’s no magic wand for the funding problem. She’ll be on economy duty telling people off for trying to overspend

She’s already done some of this anyway

Then you’ve got Lammy and co and Starmer doesn’t want to talk about it

I can’t believe people rate them

Ps I know you don’t. I’m glad someone on mn isn’t a Labour loyalist

She'll most likely just put you down as a non Labour voter. No way she'll report your reasons if that is her attitude. Starmer is projecting this attitude of what he hopes is benign indifference to the issue. Hoping it all just goes away...

My Tory male MP totally gets all our issues.
I had a long email when I previously wrote to him about self I/d
I have to vote for him. IMO this isn't a single issue - there are far reaching consequences for us all.

I’m not sure that many people do rate them tbh. They get an easy ride from the BBC; Labour generally does. And people are fed up of the Tories and want a change. What they forget is that it’s possible for things to get worse. They also don’t want to acknowledge how many of our current difficulties are down to things the public wanted and screamed for vociferously (lockdown and brexit).

Well, aren't you clever @SirSamVimesCityWatch. Definitely vote Tory though yeah, they're plunging ever-increasing numbers of children into poverty; they're still not promising a fully-funded pay-rises for the public sectors (despite Thursdays announcement) so your kids schools will continue go be crippled and our hospitals underfunded; the Prime Minister literally sneers whenever anyone asks him a question in parliament because he thinks that he's above question and debate (and he propped up Boris Johnson, a man who's literally a criminal and is continuing to do criminal things now he's out of office) AND Food Bank use is through the roof and the housing market is fucked. But at least they know what a woman is!

Come on. You'd be better joining the Labour Party and fighting your corner from within. The issue of sex-based rights is important, and I don't deny it's place in political debate, but it's a small slice of a very large pie. Single-issue voting doesn't make sense when the country is in the state it is and being run by these people who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. If you vote for this corrupt and frankly evil government, I hope that you can look yourself in the mirror.

FWIW I know that I'm going to get flamed, and that's a shame because I consider myself a feminist and am certainly not unquestioning regarding the way that the Transgender issue has taken over political discourse in this country, by you have got to wake up to the bigger picture here: kids are starving, schools are on their knees, hospitals are collapsing and there's more to care about.

Keir is under the illusion that current polling demonstrates that people like him. They don’t; they just hate the other guys.

Hmmm. That’s quite a shrewd observation. Another question is how much people in the party like him. Sometimes it feels almost like they are tolerating him as they see him as their best chance of electoral success. Which makes me wonder what might happen between the next two elections.

Ah, the same old tune. Yes of course we’ll deal with women’s rights; but we have to think about the more important stuff first.
Nope

It’s tough to I aging anyone liking him. Likeability is not one of his notable qualities.
one term PM, I reckon. The public will tire of the pomposity, condescension and incompetence very quickly.

I see the scolds have arrived.

I forgot I'm not allowed to decided on my own priorities. 🙄

Two problems

Labour won’t have more money

They’ll see higher membership numbers as validation for gender ideology

“one of the ploys used by transactivists is reducing everything to a debate about safety in public spaces (with all the usual bingo card stuff, danger rears its head at home/it's all "cis" men, yada yada.) Thus neatly sidestepping whether or not - as would be the case under current law - women should have a right to PRIVACY in public spaces.”

That is exactly what is happening here in the UK too.

They are using the various sports bodies’ moving to having an “open” and “female” categories to agree that physical safety is important and then to argue that it is the only grounds on which males who claim an opposite sex gender identity should be excluded from female single-sex spaces, services and facilities.

We saw it in the documentary from the TW who is Linda Bellos’s neighbour. And we’ve seen it on here very recently from a poster, who says they are a civil servant and not GC, linking to a discussion of a very narrow set of justifications for single-sex female only provisions.

Is this another after the revolution babe, then we get to silly womens issues?

No wont work this time. This is just too important.

Having said that, we do need a plan for labour getting in.

That’s a good question. The answer is such a disrespect to women. They wouldn’t be getting my vote.

It's similar to the 'wheesht for Indy' pish we get up here .

As I said, I knew I'd get flamed and I'm not blind to or saying that the trans rights/womens rights questions aren't valid and important... I just don't think that supporting this bunch of criminal cunts currently in government because "they know what a woman is" is the answer. They're playing on it and they're laughing at you; they don't give a fuck about what a woman is or isn't, they're just looking for another route to fill their coffers a bit more before they get booted into opposition. They're giving the answer you want to hear so that you vote for a bit more of their corruption for a bit longer. It's all a game to them.

It’s interesting to look across the UK.

Labour are third in the Scottish Parliament behind the Tories. They whipped their MSPs to support the SNP’s GRA bill.

In Wales, Labour are the largest party in the Senedd, have been in government for over two decades, and they are publicly committed to seeking extra devolved powers to introduce their own GRA and to introduce a conversion therapy ban. They also use the outdated term “intersex” instead of the DSD terminology preferred by DSD advocacy groups and group “intersex” and “non binary” together.

All the evidence points to there being one direction of travel.

You were not flamed.

You do you, vote how you please, none of us will know or care.

Things have different meanings to each of us. You have your reasons, we have ours. No one is wrong here.

I'm a British citizen but too long out of UK to vote, but I sympathise with people finding it very difficult to vote for anyone in these circumstances.

Personally I think I'd regard the issue of women's sex-based rights to be important enough to hold my nose and vote Tory, something I wouldn't consider for any other reason.

Is Self Id still in the Labour manifesto? If so, a vote for Labour will be a vote for Self Id - and that uis the reason they'll give. That's certainly the angle my Labour MP takes.

They keep putting of talking about specific commitments they'll make. i reckon they'll only rerlease a new manifesto very close to the next election once they are confident of victory, no matter what the manifesto contains.

Personally think people are deluding thesmelves if they think that Labour will drop Self Id. They still meet with Stonewall, are still signed up, and recently Ian Anderson has joined their ranks ( on the board of stonewall)

Standard Twitter babble. Dismissed.

i would have thought that the Tories will be poised to jump on anything they say and capitalise on it though; can labour really be dim enough not to anticipate this?

Labour has got a lot to live up to if people really think they are going to be able to solve some of those fundamental issues and crises that we are currently suffering with. I anticipate a lot of grave disappointment and a whole lot of rage and anger - especially from those on the Left who have been silenced and cast out by Starmer.

Reeves is pledged to keeping within the financial contraints she has inherited. how can you solve all of the above with pretty much the same resources, and a bit of cutlery re-arranging?