Protecting single-sex spaces not top priority for most voters, says Jenrick

[IwantToRetire]

“I don’t want the Conservative Party to just be a one-issue party, or to just go down a rabbit hole of culture wars.

“I’m as concerned as the next person about what my kids are being taught [in] school or how we’re ­approaching sensitive issues like safe spaces for women and trans.

“But that is not what 90 per cent of the public are thinking about. Most of the time, people are concerned about the cost of living, housing, public services, immigration, and I wanted to be spending most of my time on those things. If we can do that, then I think we win back those Lib Dem voters.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/protecting-single-sex-spaces-not-top-priority-for-most-voters-says-jenrick/ar-AA1pQsd6

Now that the tory leadership contest has officially started, expect many more leaks that this.

Though strange that today hardly any papers bothered to report on Kemi Badenoch's launch apart from attacking "Dr Who"

Yes, economically she's very ideological. Too ideological for me.

What Jenrick means is, he's spoken to some blokes and none of them can figure out what the silly women are upset about. It's very much the same thing Rory Stewart came out with for a long time, though Rory seems to be gradually catching on that there may be an issue here.

I think the membership are totally ready for Kemi. There aren't all that many Sir Bufton Tufton types left in the party, and lots of the members would love to hear a black woman talk about Britain as the land of opportunity. It would pose an interesting problem for Labour.

Apart from Labour never having elected a female or ethnic minority leader, there's something very weird about Labour leadership contests. All the candidates do the Four Yorkshiremen sketch and hype up how humble their backgrounds are, even if they really aren't. But none of them talk about educational opportunity, which is how most of them got where they are.

I have teenagers. Many of my friends are teachers. If I talk to anyone who has anything to do with schools they are aware of this issue. It crept up on us. Twenty years ago it was sex ed teaching that gender is not the same as sex, now there are over 100 genders. The internet tells them that mumsnet is full of ill informed gossips rather than well educated women defending the last bastion of common sense.

All the schools I know have built unisex toilets with floor to ceiling doors to cubicles (the safety issues have been discussed here) and shared washbasins (the privacy issues have been discussed here) in a central area.

My female teacher friends, who also have daughters have noticed.

It's like a page from the handbook of Mao's cultural revolution, convert the children and alienate the adults in their lives.

Thinking about it, ridicule is a good way of destroying something stupid.

It is. And that's where #bekind comes in here.

I like how he’s pretending that Britain is still some kind of democracy.

Immigration was an issue for some Brexiteers. The majority found two problems with the EU. The first was sovereignty. The second was its lack of democratic accountability. No-one with socialist tendencies who understood the EU, could stomach the EU's business model: support for big business, little help for small business, and a set of freedoms (free movement of capital (right of establishment), free movement of labour, goods and services) which are inimical to both the nation-state and to working people. The nation-state has been demonstrated to be the bulwark of democracy that works; this makes the EU inimical to democracy as well. This last point can be easily seen in the treatment of countries where the people and government go against EU 'norms', for example in acceptance of TiMs as being 'real women' - they are told to get into line and find various advantages of being a member state, such as EU investment in poorer areas, improvements to infrastructure, being withdrawn. Both Hungary and Poland (deeply conservative) have been made examples of - esp Hungary in its reaction to the influx of illegal immigrants (they probably remember the last influx - the Mongol invasion of the sixteenth century).

I always suspect Labour are against people getting out of the crab bucket (as some of them have) because they think once one has something one will no longer vote Labour (some truth in this, but not much).
It's interesting that progressive methods of education such as discovery learning, which advantage the already advantaged, are left leaning ideas, whereas traditional teaching, where the teachers teach the pupils rather than facilitating their discovery of Pythagoras' law are stigmatised as right wing. The latter are the methods which get children out of the poverty trap - and is probably how all those Labour leaders were taught in their expensive/expensive area schools.
NB I live in Leicestershire. In the county (where I used to live) virtually everyone of any class hunts, fishes, follows the hunt (on foot/by car/on horseback) and is generally supportive of field sports and the way such sports encourage conservation. Late DH's close friend - brought up on the poorest council estate in Europe (Saffron Lane) and not prosperous - shoots and breeds field dogs. That is not unusual - they are not at all Sir Tufton Buftons (or posh) and mostly vote Labour.

completely this.

If you were to look at the demographic of the few grammar schools that are left you would find them stuffed with aspirational middle classes (often prep schooled).
Labour politicians only send their children to the best schools even if they have to pay for them, as do most of their voters now.

Does anyone know what's happening with schools affected by the RAAC issue?

Does anyone know what's happening with schools affected by the RAAC issue?

As it happens there was a feature on this a few days ago on the BBC News website.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj35v5xky0xo

Some relevant paragraphs.

"In February, Bridget Phillipson, then Labour's shadow education secretary, asked the DfE to publish a planned timetable for the removal of Raac from the school estate.

The following month, she said the government also needed to provide timelines to all schools in need of rebuilding work, regardless of whether or not they had Raac.

The new government has not published either timetable. The DfE said it was working closely with schools and colleges with Raac.

"We remain fully focused on work to resolve this problem as quickly as possible, permanently removing Raac either through grant funding or the school rebuilding programme," it said."

So no timetable and no detail on funding.

Rebuilding schools is a marvellous opportunity to carefully think about toilet and changing room provision I think.

Just read the bbc link. The RAAC issue is more disruptive than covid was to education. hells bells.

I must admit I haven't taken time to track down the whole speech, and as the article is from the Telegraph, suspect they highlighted it given that they know their readers will react.

But assuming the Telegraph hasn't misquoted him, and even if he said lots of other interesting thing, the question is why he frames it as most the of the public aren't interested. That's true of a huge number of issues.

Who is he trying to appeal to. He could have made some comment about as a true blue Brit he is committed to fairness, and would remain aware / active on the issue of women's rights being eroded.

Politics in the UK is so much now about messaging, usually influenced by some focus group or other.

Why even bring it up? Is it because he thinks most Tories (the ones who vote) aren't interested?

After I posted this link, I later heard that for some totally mad reason, the Tory leadership contest will not be settled until November. How could it possibly take that long. Groan.

(And as a political commentator on tv said, does that mean until November their will not be an effective opposition to Starmer and Labour in the HoC. Or will the new "independent Alliance"?)

I voted Labour without any high hopes. I was pleased about the ban on puberty blockers and the new guidance for schools. I'd quite like Kemi to get in just to keep Labour on their toes and point out when they're being absurd. Prime Ministers questions would be entertaining. The best governments have a strong opposition. I don't think many people vote purely on women's rights issues but I think the destruction of the SNP shows that being vague/weak/advocating self id and child sterilisation doesn't help a political party at all.

But assuming the Telegraph hasn't misquoted him, and even if he said lots of other interesting thing, the question is why he frames it as most the of the public aren't interested. That's true of a huge number of issues.

Very good point. With a niche issue like, let's say at random, forest management - you don't even mention it unless you've a specific reason to mention it.

If Jenrick mentions it to say that it's a niche issue, what he means is nobody important cares about this. It's exactly the framing that Labour bigwigs were doing before the election when they said nobody ever raised it on the doorsteps.

And what makes me suspicious is, that's only ever cover for advancing the TRA position. Not that I think Jenrick actually believes in the TRA position, but he might believe that soft pedalling the issue will help him win back some of those Lib Dem voters.

Excellent points. '(P)rogressive' is shorthand for the Whig view of history - that society moves in a forward direction and improves all the time so that the present is better than the past; thus 'progress' must not be impeded because all change is for the better. Tennyson put it nicely 'the old order changeth, giving place to new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world'.
Any student of history will point out that this view of history as constant change for the better is inaccurate e.g. women in the Middle Ages had more rights than women under Queen Victoria.
The Whig view of history brought us the tearing down of beautiful buildings to be replaced with new ones which were better as we had progressed in our architecture to take out unnecessary detail etc (the detail was necessary, it kept the rain off the walls and held up the ceilings, to name but two items: corbels and cornices) and landed us with concrete monstrosities which disfigure our towns and cities. Not all change is progressive, not all 'progress' is for the good. How it used to be is frequently much better.

I wouldn't vote Lib/Dem if you paid me. Undemocratic lot who showed their true colours over Brexit referendum. Along with David Lammy - not forgetting him saying that women who 'hoarded' single sex spaces were dinosaurs. I'm a dinosaur, Mr Lammy.

I suspect that the subtext is:

Kemi Badenoch is all over this and I don't really have a clue. Can I park this in the 'not important' corner to avoid having to actually debate it?

Yes, I know that I split an infinitive.

Rachel Rosario Sanchez in Unherd

https://unherd.com/newsroom/conservatives-should-not-dismiss-single-sex-space-concerns/

It not being many voters top concern doesn't mean voters are unconcerned.

It's not really wrong, in English, to split an infinitive, as the infinitive is two words e.g. to do. It matters in some languages e.g. Latin, which is where the rule was imported from in the sixteenth century (not all change is for the better...).

Good article by Sanchez. Thanks for posting @lcakethereforeIam . But the EA2010 does need reform: to remove the assumption that single-sex spaces shall be exceptions. This is entirely the wrong way round. Amendment needs to install exeptions from the rule that single-sex spaces shall exclude male-bodied persons unless there is a good reason to include them (i.e. it is a mixed-sex event, venue). Suspect bad drafting was intentional, because no-one working on EA2010 cared a sh*t about women or women's rights.

Former cabinet minister Priti Patel has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership contest in the first round of voting by Tory MPs.
The former immigration minister Robert Jenrick topped the poll of MPs with 28 votes followed by Kemi Badenoch on 22 votes.

Third was James Cleverly with 21, fourth was Tom Tugendhat with 17, fifth was Mel Stride with 16 and last was Dame Priti on 14.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d7y92n31zo