Polly Toynbee asks why so many women are undecided how to vote?

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/27/female-voters-undecided-labour-rachel-reeves

not even a passing reference to the huge elephant in the room.

If this is really true and 25% are genuinely undecided maybe the vast lot of this down to the gender issue, what will it mean at the GE?

That’s the interesting question which Polly doesn’t explore. Do they really see the coverage of this issue & think it has no impact?

It’s completely idiotic to think it’s about trans/gender stuff. The vast, vast majority of people outside of mumsnet do not obsess over it, and certainly don’t vote based on it.

Also just a reminder that the tories have basically decriminalised rape, which should be much more discussed on this site. Oh and it’s trans stuff that gets your goat, who has been in power over the past 13 years and overseen some of the bigger expansions in trans rights? Yeah, it’s the tories guys.

I dunno Polly, you could perhaps ask some actual women? Maybe those who didn't go to Oxford and don't work at the Guardian?

Or the Guardian could enable comments on that article?

She sometimes secretly wishes women had never got the vote, because many of them vote Tory?
That’s a revolting attitude, freedom but only if you see things our way.
Which is perhaps often why people don’t vote Labour.

and who are not already Labour supporters

if they really didn’t think the “what is a woman” question was of no importance, Labour wouldn’t have shifted position to address it in interviews

its schrodingers issue - simultaneously completely unimportant to anyone but 6 people on here (apparently) but important enough that all the Labour front bench must say “a woman is an adult human female”

Christ I didn’t register that bit @NorthStarRising

So, your theory for 25%? That's a massive number at the end of an age of all round Tory failure. You'd expect maybe 5%. No, despite your good points about this failure, there's obviously something big bugging so many women.

And you may think MN are the only obsessives on this subject. Sure, we may be bellweathers here, but the anger is reflected all the way thru polite society. We may talk about it online all the time, but women are talking privately as well.

If even half that 25% goes walkies and not for Labour, I can see the GE result being much tighter.

Absolutely @Tukmgru - I think it's deluded to imagine that a 'gender critical' vote will actually change anything, as you say most people, including most women, have no particular engagement with the subject and certainly not enough to change how they vote.

• the vast majority of people don't care about gender issues
• the Tories have fucked women and the country over in multiple ways
• 25% of female voters are still undecided about how to vote

Only two out of these three things can be true.

Pick two.

Why can’t all three be true? In fact I think they are. And I say this as a gender critical woman.

And how many men are undecided? Who asked these people? It's like that rubbish I was told at university that all US women ask their men how they should vote. Like they haven't got their own minds.

When I was canvassing for the local government elections (Tory) it was clear that Boris had little voter appeal but Keir did not have much more. I actually liked people who were up front and said they were Labour supporters and would not vote for me. (That part of the ward was pretty middle class. The council tower blocks were a different story, though again the Labour vote is suffering. Truth is many people are not attracted to either party.) Anyway I would ask them if they vote for Corbin. The answer was usually ‘no’. Then I would ask if they agreed with Keir on TWAW. Whatever other posters say, this is important. Gender is clearly a big issue in local schools with lots of NB kids and people (often men) saying they were worried about a niece or that they saw men invading women’s sport as cheating and ridiculous. I am not sure it is seen as a party issue, and it should not be. But it does add to a distrust of Keir and a sense he is slimy. I must have knocked on a thousand doors and I don’t think I met a single person who enthusiastically said they were looking forward to Keir as PM. (But then I did not meet too many who were eagerly anticipating another 4 years of the Conservatives😁)

Polly didn’t do too well at Oxford, though, dropped out in her second year. Many and various are the reasons she has given over the years, depending on the cause du jour.

Polly actually shadowed me for an ‘assignment’ at my then employers, about which she was going to write. It was fairly obvious after day one that she had already made up her mind about what she was going to write, and that actual experience ( lived experience’) was not going to inform her conclusions.

Perfectly pleasant, no trouble to take around, just blinkered.

I do think that most people are instinctively gender critical, yes, and that those who believe TWAW are a small minority. And that most people are opposed to the transing of children and to men accessing women’s spaces.

However, I think it’s sufficiently far off the vast majority of people’s radar as an issue that it will not affect how they vote, or whether they choose to do so or not.

@Needmoresleep I’ve canvassed before, for another party. It’s a significant step, you’ve got to really believe in them. Not to derail the conversation and I’m not trying to goad - genuine question. What have the tories actually done in the past 13 years that is a net positive for the country that would merit them getting another 4 years at the next election?

My son was born last year, and by the time he was a month old he’d seen 3 prime ministers. I’ve lost count of the number if by-elections and soon to happen by-elections that have happened since he was born as well, triggered by the tories being an incompetent and often letcherous mess. I just can’t see any positives in them, but I would be very interested in hearing an alternative point of view.

Although Tbf if your thing is either Brexit or culture wars, then there’s absolutely no chance I’ll listen 🤣

The Tories are an absolute horror show & I’d rather cut my arms off than vote for them

ive voted Labour all my life but they’re spineless cowards on this. They all know what a woman is, they just decided it was easier to placate shouty threatening men.

what happened to politicians who had some bloody spine & behaved with rationality?

Not only has the Guardian not opened comments on their web site, they dont seem to want it to be open to twitter commentators - or they just dont think the article worth promoting.

However is on facebook with just three comments https://www.facebook.com/GuardianOpinion/posts/pfbid02qkoVjAvTnnESBWkcbCdhjbSDUhHGawZPsDhcUoFsQUCBb5a7qW3FJLY7gzzSK4EXl

They’ve got comments on it now - lot of deletions…..

Because if the second thing is undeniable (which I think it is) then either the first or the third thing cannot be true.

Labour's idiocy over gender can be the only real reason so many women are still hesitating. What else could it be?

25% is not to be sniffed at.

I do wonder what the impact has been for Labour, where - so I gathered including through people I knew that had exited - women did leave, or just not help out with the day to day local party politics. I wonder if they've suffered also with the door knocking due to fewer people available. Their 2019 post mortem (written by Miliband?) didn't mention this.

They also face the threat of a split over Israel/Gaza. Presumably that could thwart their door knocking numbers.

Then they are trying to kick this very expensive (so far, ain't gonna get cheaper!) case to post-GE:

Labour faces multi-million pound bill in ex-Jeremy Corbyn staff court case www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67023015

And it's hard to figure out if they are getting numbers up, as well as whether members are all paying their fees or not:

labourlist.org/2023/06/labour-party-members-numbers-membership-how-many-big/

Behind the scenes, it would be interesting to know what's going on with these things as they could end up being really important. Especially if there actually is such a large proportion of the population that is undecided.

Oh, I think she knows the answer to that.

I firmly agree with you that the second proposition is true - the Tories have clearly and demonstrably destroyed the country. However, the nature of politics is that not everyone will agree with us, no matter how right we feel we are or even how right we objectively are. There are some people who think the Tories have done just fine. And there are others who think the Tories have done badly but won’t say they’ll vote for someone else for a whole variety of reasons. And there are many many people who are just apathetic about politics and never bother to think about it, or often, to vote. It’s not as simple as 100% of the country enthusiastically agreeing that a) the Tories have messed up the country, and b) the thing to do about it is to vote for someone else.

Surely this assumes that people can only choose between Tory and Labour?

For all we know, many of the 25% who are undecided might be wavering between labour/libdem/green or other parties etc.

People may be resolute in their decision not to vote Tory (regardless of their position on gender issues) while being uninspired by the other parties and therefore undecided about how to cast their vote.