Woman's Hour want to know what would make you vote Labour

[WinterTrees]

Today's programme (Tuesday Oct 10th) in case anyone wants to get in touch.

The question is 'what do Labour have to do to get your vote?'

Define a woman correctly, and keep men out of women’s spaces. That would be a start.

Yep. Public apology to Rosie Duffield. Acknowledge that both sides are not 'as bad as each other' and Kier to step aside as a leader because he's too misogynistic to be in any position of power.

Genuinely, I think they’d need to convince me that the party has a coherent position on a whole range of issues and that Starmer has the vision and leadership to set out that position honestly and unambiguously and see it through.

They aren’t doing that.

And that is from someone who will not be voting conservative (there is literally nothing they could do to convince me to vote for them) or Lib Dem (their situation is even more dire than labour’s) or green (hahahahaha - no!). But I will spoil my ballot rather than take positive action to vote labour in if they can’t inspire my confidence that they might be capable of achieving anything desirable.

Nothing.

The confidence issue goes way beyond their (lack of coherent and consistent) position on women’s rights. But that is one symptom of the bigger problem.

As in they lost my vote and I can't see them ever winning it back. See also Tories.

Did anyone hear it? How did it go?

Speak definitively on what a woman is. Not have a poor history of anti-semitism, sexism, being overly interfering in day to day lives, invading Iraq, dodgy deaths of some of their opponents therein. On their current planned manifesto they also need to bin off the school fee thing. A generation of children have had their education affected by covid policies and some of us scrape together money and work on awful jobs to give our children an education which is simply not available where we live.
I am all for taxing the rich, but let's start realising that the rich are not who are actually these days middle income earners.

They should be throughly ashamed of the state they are in. At this point - and with the absolute, undeniable mess the conservatives have managed to make over the last 13 years - it should be obvious that labour will win any election and that should feel like a positive move.

It should be easy for them to inspire sufficient confidence in a broad swathe of the electorate. Keir Starmer should be planning something akin to new labour sweeping in on a wave of hope for the future in 1997.

But, somehow, they seem to think that just not being as obviously dysfunctional and awful as the current government is where the bar should be set. There is nothing inspirational about Labour. No sense of hopefulness in the prospect of them forming a government. Just a sense of the a slightly different shade of shit.

Aim higher, Starmer.

I'll vote for them regardless, in my area it is Labour or Tories. I'd no more vote for the morally bankrupt Tories than I would eat sick.

Everything IncomingTraffic said plus when they think of a new policy they have to do 3 things;

1. check to see if its been implemented elsewhere, and if so what were the negatives. (e.g. cohabitees getting more legal rights)

2. ask people who would be affected what their views are (e.g. scrapping the 'spousal consent' clause from the GRA)

3. Actually do some joined up thinking. Is the new proposal legal? How will it affect other areas? Scrapping spousal consent will change the legal definition of a contract.

It’s worth noting that Labour’s inability to generate my confidence is a real problem. I - and people like me - show be the low hanging fruit for Labour, if not their natural base of support.

It is simply not that I’ve gone all right wing as I’ve entered my 40s or whatever. I don’t find myself more supportive of Conservative Party policy. It’s that labour seem to have been determined to find every single possible way to alienate me.

There are a lot of women like me out there.

Is it worth somebody emailing them a link to this thread?

I can't bring myself to vote Tory due to the overwhelming damage they have caused to disabled and low to middle income people, but the women's rights issue is too important for me to vote Labour the way they currently stand. Can't vote Lib Dem or Green because of the same issue. In all fairness the Tories aren't even much better; they could have taken action and haven't, (Liz Truss I'm glaring at you in particular) it's just that they haven't outright made anti-women statements. Current plan is to spoil ballot, but if Labour can define a woman and present protections I could be persuaded. I've voted for them as the least bad option the last election. As things stand I just can't.

Absolutely.

Especially given they are currently led by a barrister who has led the CPS.

Their apparent unwillingness to consider the legal implications of the nonsense they are floating is really worrying. Starmer has no excuse for this nonsense.

Stop focusing on the politics of envy (private school fees) and come up with some policies that genuinely get Britain out of the mess we're in. Lowest growth in the G7 + highest interest rates?!!

I'll vote for them regardless, in my area it is Labour or Tories. I'd no more vote for the morally bankrupt Tories than I would eat sick.

Agree they are morally bankrupt, but it doesn't get more morally bankrupt than Labour being too gutless to say that women are adult human females and men can't be women.

They don’t respect my sex, they don’t have any economic policies which give me hope seeing improvement in the daily lives of ordinary British people. Change both those things.

Repeal the GRA

Make it clear that sex means sex and not gender identity in law

Nationalise energy

Nationalise water

Nationalise trains

Build a user friendly off road cycle network so that cycling is a viable mode of transport for work, school, leisure, shopping etc

Build more council housing

Get private contractors out of public services, no more taxpayers money to swell their profits, all the money which goes to the NHS, local councils, schools should be used to benefit people not to making the rich richer while our public services are run down.

No more PFI

Bring schools and children’s homes back under LA control

Don’t allow private companies to run prisons

Make all public services political neutral, no more days of awareness or promoting particular causes

I heard some Labour man taking on the radio this morning about doing the opposite, he said Labour will get more private investment in public services. No thank you.

I don’t think I will be voting Labour

Make Rosie Duffield their leader : )

Nothing else would convince me that they aren’t a bunch of unprincipled deceptive opportunists

Yep.

They'd have to commit to listening. To concede how badly wrong they have been on some issues. And acknowledge what they've done to women.

I dunno, though. It's all just going to be fed into the spin machine, isn't it? And they will spit out another speech-written-by-committee with focus-group talking points, bullet pointed 'issues' and carefully calibrated politico-speak that is supremely vague enough that it will appeal to all people at all times.

It's such utter, utter wank. The faux 'passion' that is Rayner shouting about how Tories are 'scum'. The faux 'both sides' ism that is Starmer with his fucking weasel words.

It's so far removed from what I actually want in politicians - honesty, integrity, humility, a collegiate willingness to consider others views and work with them for the greater good - that I really don't see a party with even a glimmer of a reason for me to vote for them. Not a one.

It's not a great position to be in.

Absolutely everything @IncomingTraffic just said. Well put.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r7yj

From 25 minutes.

All of this. And acknowledge that “women’s rights” does not mean “anti-trans”.
Admit that Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy got it completely wrong with their enthusiasm for TWAW and saying convicted criminals who are TW should be accommodated in the prison of their choosing. They should reflect on why the party threw themselves so eagerly into this ideology.
None of this is enough though. They need a leader with real conviction and courage, not one that is almost completely invisible when the Tories do yet another awful thing.

Its not so much a case of feeling a strong need to vote for labour because of their amazing policies - its more a case of voting for them because they are the least worst option.

I can understand why there is so much voter apathy in this country.

There is nothing...

Take us back into the EU (or at least the Common Market) so that we can at least make something of an economic recovery.

I wish that's what would happen, but I'll be voting for them anyway. There's no way on God's green earth I'd vote Tory.