Another suspended Green (E&W this time) speaks up

[lcakethereforeIam]

I admit I thought this was the Scots again. Unfortunately, the madness is not just confined to the North of the border

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/30/the-greens-are-putting-trans-ahead-of-childrens-health/

https://archive.ph/OieBK bypass paywall and despair of sense ever returning to the Greens

I remember Darren from when he was a local councillor in London Borough of Lewisham. He did that for 12 years and was also a member of the London Assembly for 14 years, so a serious Green politician. But he started when the Green Party was primarily concerned with the environment and hadn't yet developed into a batshit crazy progressive party.

I looked at his Twitter account when things started to get concerning re Trans vs women's right to speak (when Venice Allen's meetings were being cancelled by the venues, both in Lewisham) but he had retired from active politics and moved to Brighton. I got the impression he wasn't full on TWAW.

Glad to see he's stood by his beliefs but it's unfortunate he's been treated this way.

Quote from the article 😁

"I will admit to calling some of my erstwhile colleagues “science-denying loons”."

So, if it's not too far off topic for this thread, who are we supposed to vote for if we're gender critical and on the left? The Greens were my go-to protest vote years ago, but if they really are jumping on the trans cancel culture bandwagon then it's probably a no from me.

It's worth remembering if considering a vote for the Greens, that there's obviously no chance whatsoever of them forming government, or at this stage even having any significant minority power. So it's not like the TWAW idiocy is actually going to affect legislation of have any practical consequences.

In this sense it's different from the question of whether to tolerate Labour's position on trans rights and vote for them, because there you're having to tolerate actual laws potentially being passed.

Obviously it's not ideal, and noone wants to vote for a party with policies in one area that they find offensive, out of principle. But I agree with most everything else the Greens stand for - and having lost all faith in Labour, contributing to the long-term growth of Green support is the only modest way I have to use my left wing vote. If that ends up amounting to actual political power of some kind 20 years from now, then the trans debate will have moved on by then anyway.

But if you give them a vote now, instead of being trounced, they will take heart that others agree with them on this batshittery. That could matter in 20 years or not. Not a chance I'd like to take.

This whole thing is not new, it's been a slow process over many years. It could easily rear its head again, and we will have a fight on our hands still.

I want womens rights to single sex spaces as enshrined in law as possible. Voting green now might very well backfire on us.

See also labour, SNP etc

There's also the possibility that the Greens, assuming they get any MPs, might have a vote, THE vote, needed to get a bill through. See what happened in Scotland, the Green tail wagging the SNP dog.

I'm hoping there's going to be a local interest type or MRLP candidate standing in my constituency

The SDP are sound on women's rights, so I had hopes for them - but the current manifesto is well to the right of centre on most things.

Which leaves the communists as the only sane left wing party.

Not that either other of those stand, where I live. I have no clue who I'll vote for.

The problem with ignoring their stance on trans issues is that they have other equally batshit ideas. The experience in Scotland has been an absolute disaster and very expensive so now we are facing more cuts to basic services

But if you give them a vote now, instead of being trounced, they will take heart that others agree with them on this batshittery. That could matter in 20 years or not. Not a chance I'd like to take.

Or even just argue that those who voted for them agree with their stance on subject xyz. Which was supposedly what happened in Scotland with the SNP: before elections they were keen to highlight their broad range of policies and that a vote for them wasn't necessarily a vote supporting independence. Then after the elections when they're battling Westminster, they claim that everyone who voted SNP had been demonstrating their support for independence.

Sure. In an ideal world, I'd rather vote for a party with whom I agree about everything, or at least everything important. But there isn't one, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

So in the real world, where we have to weigh up the relative amount of compromise in the various choices available, the danger of voting Green and finding that their one or two MPs "take heart" because they assume I agree with their gender policies, is far less grave than the danger of voting Labour and actually enabling those policies to be enacted in law. That's all I meant.