Wes Streeting (Labour Shadow Health Secretary) pledges "support for the Cass Review’s evidence-led recommendations and our determination to put children’s health and wellbeing above the political fray"

[LogicLoverLlama]

twitter - https://twitter.com/wesstreeting/status/1777835770184634751

Is this what we need to vote Labour? I was genuinely going to rip up my "never kissed a tory" badge

It's a start but I want a commitment to no men in women's spaces before I vote Labour again. I'm never going to vote Tory but I will spoil my ballot paper before voting for any party that says trans women are women with no appreciation that that means men in changing rooms, sports, prisons, women's toilets and rape crisis centres.

I’m all for the golden bridge and not holding a grudge.

But Labour is only half way there. They’ve (finally) listened to the evidence on how best to treat children. Which is excellent.

Now I just need a manifesto commitment on single (biological) sex spaces being legal and enforceable before I can vote for them. That is also an evidence based policy (Sex Matters has proved it).

My local candidate knows how to get my vote in a very marginal seat, and she knows this is what I need to see. I can’t trust her personal assurances, however lovely she is.

Golden bridges are not supposed to be conditional. (Setting aside that Sun Tzu did also consider them as a way to funnel and destroy an enemy in some contexts it's largely interpreted as a mechanism that allows opponents to walk away with no shame.)

The Persian Expedition, pp. 136-37, 236. The principle was expressed by Sun Tzu in China, around 500 B.C. in his Art of War “When you surround an army leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” Ptolemy, serving under Alexander in the fourth century B.C., surrounded a hill, “leaving a gap in his line for the enemy to get through, should they wish to make their escape.” Vegetius, writing in the fourth century A.D., had a section headed, “The flight of an enemy should not be prevented, but facilitated,” and commends a maxim of Scipio “that a golden bridge should be made for a flying enemy.” It is, of course, a fundamental principle of riot control and has its counterparts in diplomacy and other negotiations.

It would be enormously useful if prominent people studied Cass and used it as a basis to announce a reversal of their previous decision. However, there is a literature that indicates you can suffer a loss of face and status by acknowledging error. (Also a literature that shows an apology can make a difference.) Politicians and Key Media Influencers may need to consider what would work best for them.

Many services that the NHS provide already come from the private sector. The NHS buys into them. This has been going on for years - since Blair's government, in fact. I think that Streeting thinks it is more important that people get seen quickly than it is to be ideologicaly pure about only using NHS services or facilities.

Has she talked to Ed today? Can she give him a slap for saying the opposite then please?

From comments I've seen many posters are unaware of this or think it will reverse with next Labour government.

Thing is I'm all for reform and not against more private involvement especially if services and wait times improve but think PPI under New Labour wasn't a great policy in hindsight and has left issues - so I'd like to know the details or travel of direction rather than rely on trust us.

Yes, if I recall while thatcher introduced tendering far more of the NHS has been privatised under Labour than the Tories. I'm pretty ambivalent about it as long as it's done well (not PFI style or over charging for basic supplies). I also think the NHS needs reform as well as investment It's just baffling that people still see the tories as the privatiser of the NHS, when it's Labour that have actually outsourced the most.

I still don't trust Labour on this. Wes Streeting might be making some sense but plenty of the other Labour MPs aren't. A cursory glance at Twitter today revealed Annelise Dodds still going on about conversion therapy yesterday and an absolute halfwit MP called Nadia Whittome bleating about how the Cass Review had no credibility and that she would be comforting trans people in the coming days.

Nadia clearly has absolutely no ability to read the room and is devoid of any compassion for people who have had their bodies ruined by this nonsense. If anyone here has got Nadia as an MP you might want to share your thoughts with her (Twitter replies are blocked). I don't want people like this idiot to have any say in running the country.

Perhaps also now Labour bigwigs might want to distance themselves from the unsavoury antics of Scottish and Welsh Labour too, who seem to be solidly TWAW?

PFI seems to have been awful.

The one thing the NHS really needs is scrutiny and oversight. There are so, so many reports about failing services and no one is ever responsible or accountable.

How many reports have there been now about maternity care? How many have seen anyone held to account? It's not like the top managers aren't remunerated well because they are. What they're delivering for it however, seems to be quite the disconnect.

Nadia Whittome is certainly a very dim bulb, but she's far from the only one in the HoC.

THIS! Thank you MorrisZapp! (loved those David Lodge books back in the day, BTW).

I mean yeah, it would be lovely if all these poor benighted souls who have seen the light acknowledged their hypocrisy and the fact that they've shut us all down for years and years, that people have lost jobs, and friends, and social esteem. But mostly, I want changes to be implemented and less harm to be done, going forward.

And if Labour think everything in Cass is fine and dandy, why did they block Labour women's groups from their own conference, who would have wanted to say much the same? Eh, Wes?

Personally I still will not vote for Labour as I do not trust any of their MPs or MPSs Wes Streeting is a snake, just like Starmer

I don't particularly trust Streeting, but he's been staking out a relatively reality-based position, even if it's just because he's one of the few Shadow Cabinet bods who can read an opinion poll.

This strengthens his position, and it's given cover to Cooper to also come out with a relatively sane position, though they both have to couch it in terms of "culture wars" and "toxic debate". This appeals to the section of Labour that loves to have the authority of an independent report.

Would I like to have grovelling mea culpas? Absolutely, but the nature of politics means we won't get them. What might be possible for Streeting or Cooper would be to say something along the lines of "we went into this with the best of intentions, but the issue turns out to be more complicated than we could have known."

My worry is that, without Labour acknowledging any kind of rethink, and without a recognition that Cass may have some relevance to self-ID, you've still got the zealots of the Dodds and Rayner variety out there, and Starmer in the middle trying to finesse a word salad that he thinks will keep everyone pacified.

So I'm pleasantly surprised, but not counting any chickens just yet.

Hypocrite - dont believe a word of it.

Wes Streeting?

This is just why people end up despising politicians.

Can just see him and Starmer flip flopping all over the place.

I'm going to preface this with, I fucking hate the sun. But streeting has been talking to them.

On stonewall Asked if he stood by the organisations’ claim that “trans women are women, get over it”, he admitted “no”.

When I asked him whether “leading figures” like himself were part of the decades-long problem of silencing any critic of the sweeping transgender debate, he replied: “Absolutely”.

Didn’t Sajid Javid commission the Cass report whilst he was still Health Secretary?

Putting himself in the box-seat, I expect. A modest mea culpa now may pay dividends later.

Incredibly it was actually Matt Hancock but when Javid replaced him to his credit he could see this was a brewing medical scandal and did quite a bit to push it forward.

though they both have to couch it in terms of "culture wars" and "toxic debate". This appeals to the section of Labour that loves to have the authority of an independent report.

Indeed. I don’t understand why posters are reacting to Labour repeating their favourite refrain of “toxic debate” and “culture wars” as if it’s a tremendous breakthrough.

Have they explicitly come out and said that they are opposed to breast amputation surgery for teenagers? Have they explicitly said they are opposed to putting children on hormone treatment that will sterilise them?

Or have they done their best to create the (false) impression that Cass has said the same thing they’ve been saying all along? By repeating their usual culture war mantra and saying they agree with Cass saying something about being evidence led. When in reality their previous position was evidence-free misleading hyperbole, attacks on others, and parroting stonewall.

Thanks, I get mixed up on the timing with those two.

Wes Streeting has been quietly repositioning on this for a while.
I doubt we will see any widespread apologies or rescinding of attitudes. Politics isn't like that.
There will hopefully be a ripple from this report that reaches all the important places and goes a long way to achieving a more balanced approach.
I'm very grateful to Dr Cass and her colleagues.

Javid made the necessary legislative changes via/to the GRA for the research, which then couldn't happen as almost all the adult services refused to cooperate.

It's not just politicians, though, is it? it's the Embedded, in the CS, NHS, and elsewhere.