Vote for local Tory candidate or spoil vote?

[popsicles2342]

Please can you explain how it works. Looks like the only decent candidate in my area is a Tory. Happens that she's a woman who understands sex-based rights. Labour didn't bother replying and Lib-dem spouted nonsense saying he understood the issue about single sex spaces but also that sex is not binary!

If I vote for the Tory candidate and she wins, will that 1. effectively keep her in (sounds good to me) 2. but also help keep Tories in power (not what I want)

Assuming Labour win, then won't it be ok to at least have a few Tory candidates that fight for sex-based rights? Or does it not work like that? I don't really understand how it all works!

A long-term Labour voter, I have been battling between spoiling my vote and voting for Miriam Cates.

I am now tipping towards voting for Miriam.

Family members will never let me forget this if I tell them. I may tell them I have spoiled my vote. This is a crazy way to be thinking.

I completely understand about the family judgement. DP doesn't get it at all and will be very reactionary about it if I voted Tory.

Thanks all for your thoughts! I'm going to spend the next few days doing my research on my local candidates (as much time I can give, which is not much)

This is precisely the issue. Any MP with sensible views on women’s rights is an asset in Parliament. Also, this issue crosses party lines. There are awful, woman-hating TRAs in all parties. Vote for your local MP, I would say.

PS: Women fought hard for the right to vote. How you vote is your choice and your choice only, and no one is entitled to know who you voted for. I think this is one of these cases when lying is ok to preserve the family peace - nobody should be demanding to know.

I'm in a key marginal. I'm a lifelong labour voter but I'll be spoiling my paper. I can't vote for a labour candidate who supports full self ID and criticises and demonises women who don't agree with him.

I assume this paragraph from my local conservative candidate's literature is a standard one inserted in the pamphlet for each Tory candidate and isn't therefore his personal opinion?

Sounds like a plan. I will be voting on a local level.

I understand the feeling of wanting to spoil vote. However, my concern is if women spoil their vote as they feel are unrepresented are they inadvertently fueling it. If you have a pot of both sexes by removing yourself, does that mean the male agenda prevails?

I’ve finally had a reply to my emails to our (new) Labour candidate. We have a longstanding and useless Tory incumbent. I am not hugely convinced by this. She’s repeating the party line. I am deeply concerned about the trans inclusive conversion therapy ban and, sadly, she repeats that.

I have a postal vote which I need to complete asap. I was waiting for the candidate to answer before I decided. My options are to spoil my ballot, which I will hate to do, or vote Labour. I have no independents, or SDP candidates and I cannot forgive the Tories for austerity or Brexit.

My only hope is that, if/when Labour win, people like Wes Streeting help to influence policy and that they u turn on some of their concerning policies if there is pressure.

I really wanted to be excited about voting Labour and it feels like the lesser of five evils in our constituency. Thanks, Sir Keir and friends, for making this so hard.

@Notahandmaid Scribble out the Labour candidate's name and write Rosie Duffield X in the box where you'd put your X? It might get counted as a spoiled vote, because they consider her name an identifying mark, or it might get counted as a Labour vote because you've written in that box, but if it's a tight race they may end up haggling over which it should be.

I have thought long and hard about which way to vote. But the only conclusion I can come to for women to be safe is under a Tory government.

No, I'm not happy about it.

But the alternative of allowing males to self-identify as women impacts all areas of women’s rights across the board: the safety of our daughters in changing rooms, schools, universities, work / sport / women’s quotas on boards / promotion of women’s interest in STEM subjects / the right to request health care and intimate examination by a same -sex healthcare professional / health care itself - because a person’s biological sex - not their acquired gender - really does have a bearing on their healthcare / male crimes of rape and violence being recorded as female crimes, (note the legal definition of ‘rape’) thus skewing national crime statistics / the right of female prisoners to be safe in prison / the need for single- sex groups for women who have experienced and/or are still at risk from domestic violence / the right for single sex spaces on religious grounds ....... the ramifications spread far and wide if our rights are not recognised.

So, I'm taking a deep breath and voting Tory because they're the only party who have shown common sense and can recognise women as women and who have stated that they will uphold our rights

Biological sex should not have to be a subject of debate in 2024! WTF!!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5108358-labour-campaign-for-trans-rights

(From 2019, but Angela Rayner, a key signatory of this has so far refused steadfastly to denounce it.............. comments in bold are mine)

Labour Campaign for Trans Rights: Pledges

1. Accept the material reality that trans people are oppressed and discriminated against in British society, facing a rising risk of hate crime, and difficulty accessing public services, healthcare, housing and employment.

Believe that trans liberation must be an objective of the Labour Party, and that transphobia is antithetical to our collective aims.

Commit to respecting trans people as their self-declared gender, and to ensure that the Labour Party is an inclusive environment for trans people.

Accept that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary.

Accept that there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights, (Do you still honestly believe this?) and that all trans women are subject to misogyny and patriarchal oppression

Listen to trans comrades on issues of transphobia and transmisogyny, allowing trans people to lead the way on our own liberation.( at the expense of women's historical rights?)

Support the work of trans members and organisers within the Labour movement, including supporting motions on a local, regional and national level which are presented for the furthering of trans liberation (at the expense of women's rights?)

Oppose transphobic motions which run contrary to our own party equalities policy, and support the NEC striking down such motions on this basis.

Organise and fight against transphobic organisations such as Woman’s Place UK, LGB Alliance and other trans-exclusionist hate groups. ( Why do you consider these to be transphobic organisations?)

Support the expulsion from the Labour Party of those who express bigoted, transphobic views.

Support reform of the Gender Recognition Act to improve transgender rights (whilst still maintaining women's rights?) as well as supporting policies which would improve trans people’s access to necessary healthcare, housing, and employment.

Organise against and oppose any further transphobic policy from our own party or any other.

These are the sensible, progressive, forward-thinking MP bastions of women's rights that signed it. ( Bastions of women's rights?)

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Salford and Eccles
Angela Rayner, Ashton-under-Lyne
Lisa Nandy, Wigan
Karl Turner, East Hull
Nadia Whittome, Nottingham East
Dawn Butler, Brent Central
Emily Thornberry, Islington South and Finsbury
Alex Sobel, Leeds North West
Zarah Sultana, Coventry South
Clive Lewis, Norwich South
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Tooting

Posting without comment, because really no comment is required

@dunBle I love this suggestion - thank you. That might well be my solution.

This has been driving me mad. Always voted Labour but did spoil my ballot last time. I'm in a safe Tory seat but my vote counts to the percentages, so I, for one time only will vote Tory. My guy is ok and understands my points of view and doesn't misunderstand the debate. I am absolutely terrified of Reform so I can kill two birds with one stone. Sorted, but I never thought I would put a cross beside a Tory candidate. How times change.

Now I've made my decision, I feel much better

I would vote labour to get them in and then campaign on this issue afterwards. Most conservative policies are deeply damaging to women. You have no guarantee that a conservative candidate would actually support women when elected - they have been so untrustworthy in power

How would you campaign? What words would you use? What data would you use to back up your position?

My concern with spoiling is that if we (GC women) all spoil is that we represent a significant number of voters and those are just lost votes. We might feel morally superior but we have done nothing in terms of changing things. Meanwhile all those votes to parties who can do real harm, such as Reform gain a bigger slice of the proportional pie and therefore more traction and potentially, seats.

No that isn't a standard paragraph in all Conservative leaflets. That is someone who has done his homework.

I couldn't agree more. We've been married 56 years and though we're pretty sure how the other votes (always left-of-centre) we never actually ask each other. This means that I don't have to lie about having voted for the Tory candidate this time, because the topic won't come up.

The thing is, in terms of the GE, I worry women have already lost. Check mate as they say.

Or like in Noughts and Crosses when you've made it so you'll definitely win no matter what your opponent does, but on the loosing side.

Please tell me I'm being too cynical.

I agree that we have lost because there simply isn't a viable alternative available to most of us. Women are either openly discriminated against and disrespected in manifestos or it's more covert with lip service dog-whistle BS.

So please don't spoil your vote, use it tactically to avoid the most-worst option gaining any form of power.

I think I've decided! I'm going to write a tantalizing cross in the Labour box THEN cross it out (is that possible?) and spoil my ballot.

Then write on the side "women's sex-based rights".

If you want to play silly buggers with your vote, that's up to you.

Spoiling your ballot is a perfectly valid way of exercising your democratic rights.

@cupcaske123 If you want to play silly buggers with your vote, that's up to you.

It's not really playing silly buggers tho - it's more politicians who are playing silly buggers by not giving us proper choices and being honest and transparent!

I do wonder tho, why one of the choices on the ballot paper can't be 'none of the above' ........................ what would the politicians make of that if it came in as a majority vote??