Labour is betraying women

[IwantToRetire]

. . . If Starmer’s government has achieved so much depressing stuff in 71 days, roughly 4 per cent of the way into a possible 5-year term, what they might achieve by the end of it fills me with dread. I believe that Labour showed us, and in some instances told us, what they would do, or not do, to ensure the continued erosion of women’s rights, and they are doing exactly what they said. Why some feminist women, seemingly in a blind bond to Labour, didn’t believe them escapes me. It also infuriates me that they think Labour deserve a bit more rope to hang us with.

Some prominent left-wing women, before the election, pleaded with us to trust Labour and allow them space to make the right decisions. They suggested that it was wrong to focus on the single issue of gender ideology, because women would benefit in so many other ways under a Labour government.

I wonder, did they envisage this Labour government? The one maintaining unequal benefits, placing violent men amongst their female victims and keeping the blurred line between gender and sex embedded in law? I can understand if those women were now as dismayed as the rest of us at what they are seeing, but instead they appear to be spinning for Labour, suggesting the violent men aren’t really being released or excusing it by blaming the Tories. They suggest we should wait and see what happens, keep the faith, trust the process. After many years of being told that women are influencing Labour “behind the scenes” my faith in that has gone.

If you are a feminist woman openly critical of Labour you may now be accused of “right wing drift”. This is nonsense. Instead, should scrutiny not be focused on how far Labour have drifted from the left? This is where condemnation should be aimed. . . .

NB - these are only some paragraphs from the article - you can read the whole article here - https://thecritic.co.uk/labour-is-betraying-women/

Agree.

This is interesting too..

If you are a feminist woman openly critical of Labour you may now be accused of “right wing drift”. This is nonsense. Instead, should scrutiny not be focused on how far Labour have drifted from the left? This is where condemnation should be aimed.

Oh, may you now? I sense a purity spiral implosion.

I think that, if you want to achieve change, you should try to persuade people who disagree with you. And half of how you achieve that is by understanding where they're coming from and why they disagree with you. Even if you suspect they're speaking in bad faith, it's usually more productive to act as if they mean what they say.

But yeah, as someone who comes from the left but has been politically homeless for quite a while, I see a lot of this. My right wing friends might think lefties are silly or naive, but they don't think they're evil. Generally they assume lefties mean well but haven't thought things through. My left wing friends mostly think that conservatives are some kind of offspring of Boss Hogg and The Joker.

You get exchanges like this:

Conservative: The benefits system is full of perverse incentives and doesn't get help to the people who really need it

Left winger: You hate the disabled and want them to die

You can't have a rational conversation on that basis.

I've been having an on-off conversation for ages with a lefty friend who's convinced Donald Trump is a raging antisemite. Now I don't care if you find Trump unacceptable for all sorts of other reasons. But this is a guy whose favourite child is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, who has Jewish grandchildren, who entrusts important business to his Jewish son-in-law. If Trump is an antisemite, he's incredibly bad at it.

My friend is also someone who strongly defended Jeremy Corbyn, which puts his distress at Trump's boomer jokes about Jewish accountants into some kind of context. But this is the point: one man is a member of the tribe, therefore a nice guy deserving the benefit of the doubt, and one is an opponent of the tribe, therefore a monster who can't just be bad in some ways but has to be bad in all the ways.

It's a very strange way of looking at the world. But the Labour stans who come here to scold us seem to really believe it.

My thought exactly. And many others will be pensioners, women living alone who now have to find more money for council tax whilst simultaneously losing their heating allowance. Many will cut their heating and also cut back on food - starving with cold. Oh, well, that'll save on pensions, won't it and the awkward squad ranks will be thinned down.

Dont want to derail this thread, but for anyone who didn't see this yesterday, newsnight did an interview with Diane Abbott, and irrespective of her politics which you may or may not support, how they "dealt" with her was probably a clear indication of a party that bends the rules to suit whoever is deemed worthy.

Links to interview here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5113136-news-politics-diane-abbott-set-to-take-up-mother-of-the-house-role-in-parliament?reply=138371800

Key feature of Labour politics, it's not even about ideology, it's all about who's in the club and who isn't. For Diane Abbott, also read Rosie Duffield, who's on the opposite wing of the party but who they also don't see as a team player.

I had a fairly minor role in exposing the SWP rape scandal in 2013. At the time I was talking to a very well connected Labour person, someone party activists would have heard of, and asked if she could imagine something similar happening in Labour.

Her response: absolutely yes. Labour might not have the intense cultishness, but it was very easy to picture them closing ranks around a dodgy man with high status in the party.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/4884926-hackney-mayor-suspended-by-labour-after-photo-emerges-of-him-partying-with-paedophile-councillor

NB the suspension only happened after a lot of negative news coverage. And in the meantime Labour HQ had told the local party not to discuss it, and when they tried to raise it as an issue had their acess to some Labour Party internal network for organising, eg calling meetings, suspended.

See that does not surprise me at all. For a party that seems fixated on morally improving the voters, they've a lot of unexamined bad habits. Starmer banging on about ethics in government really does seem like a hostage to fortune.

🙄

Sir Keir Starmer declares gifts and freebies totalling more than £100,000 - the highest of any MP

https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-declares-gifts-and-freebies-totalling-more-than-100-000-the-highest-of-any-mp-13217287

For a man whose public image comes across as a joyless lecturing prig, Keir seems to enjoy the finer things in life and, from the pics of Victoria Starmer at a fashion show this week, so does his family.

I think that, if you want to achieve change, you should try to persuade people who disagree with you... Even if you suspect they're speaking in bad faith, it's usually more productive to act as if they mean what they say.

I'll admit I struggle with this. There are certain behaviours and personalities that seem unique to online discussions which make a productive conversation nearly impossible.

As for Trump, there's a longstanding joke about TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome, preceded by Bush Derangement Syndrome]. This can be seen in its full flowering in places like Daily Kos, which I used to frequent back in the days of Dubya. It's profoundly unhelpful to turn people into cartoon villains.

I'm sure you're aware of the saying along the lines of if you're young and conservative you have no heart, and if you're old and liberal you have no brain. I'm more old than young now, but by god I want to be a lefty. They don't half make it difficult.

It did seem as though the party was waiting for her to become exhausted by the process, give up, and leave. It didn't seem she had fair handling or due process.

The other thing was how she was sent on an antisemitism course but the party seemed to have no interest in her comments about Travellers and Irish people. Which rather proved that in the LP, there in fact is a hierarchy of racism.

Labour have done and continue to treat women badly. Jean Hatchet is right to call them out for it.

A key moment is the conference for this weekend where women who believe women exist have a stall and a series of events hosted by women MPs and experts in women's issues looking at the Cass Review, women in unions etc. There is a lot going on. What will the reaction be?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5151107-labour-womens-declaration-at-lab-conference-2024-stall-reem-alsalem-unsrvaw-sonia-sodha-and-dr-anna-hutchison?page=1

No-one can be blamed for refusing to trust Labour or any political party as they all let women down. Trust is to be earned, not to be given lightly.

Anecdotally, he is richer than Boris, apparently.

Starmer's pension is so generous that he needed a special piece of legislation to protect it.

The Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013, if you don't believe me.

Really puts the WFA cut into perspective.

This 100%.

I always knew there would be revisionism from the socialist feminists.

Only a fool believes in golden bridges for demonstrably untrustworthy people.

This is a good summary of the level of polarised thinking that is everywhere at the moment. It's exasperating and stultifies debate about a huge range of issues.

It's easy to feel pressured to have a firm opinion about the rights and wrongs of an issue about which you do not know enough to have any opinion at all, never mind a strong one. To an extent this has always been an issue, but it used to be that if you came out with utter twaddle, you'd get cross-questioned by someone who did know what they were talking about, and shouting, 'You're evil! You just want them to DIE!' wasn't seen as a sufficient response: you had to go away and acquaint yourself with the facts, which meant that either you changed your mind (possibly slowly), or became able to argue back. Once you engage in serious debate with someone who is intellectually honest, you start to see their humanity, and can no longer view them as a cartoon cut-out. But a lot of people won't go that far, because they don't want to taint themselves, or they don't want to engage with the intellectual challenge, or they can't bear to read things they disagree with or - shock horror - they can't stand the prospect of discovering that they were wrong.

Couple all of that with algorithms pushing extreme opinions and misinformation masquerading as fact, and it's no wonder that politics and public discourse are both such a bloody shambles.

Labour is betraying women
Which is precisely what I expected, and is one of several reasons why I didn't vote for them. It's not often that my political instincts turn out to be correct, but in this case it has not made me happy.

I work with elderly people and it is all they can talk about, two in their eighties have been out gathering wood for their stove as they are worried about putting the heating on.

I'm sure Labour will be getting round to banning those awful stoves soon enough. Round here here, 'everyone' has one; I hadn't seen them anywhere near as widespread in other parts of the country.

Something, something, cold dead hands... 😛

Sue Gray seems to be doing alright with the new government.
Just need a strong woman to stand her ground.
😉😁😁.

Which is precisely what I expected, and is one of several reasons why I didn't vote for them. It's not often that my political instincts turn out to be correct, but in this case it has not made me happy.

Agree. This is precisely what I expected of them and I confidently expect a lot worse to come, but oh it would have been so lovely to have been proven wrong.

The other thing was how she was sent on an antisemitism course but the party seemed to have no interest in her comments about Travellers and Irish people. Which rather proved that in the LP, there in fact is a hierarchy of racism.

I think this is where the Party loyalty system (often hijacked by individuals with personal vendettas) works against progressing discussion and hopefully bringing more into the discussion and feeling part of it.

But this (behind the scenes) pile on just weaponising issues that are important but there will never be absolutely there is only one way and if you dont agree you are the enemy. eg the person who wrote (helped write) the IHRA never ever intended it to be used as an absolute rule https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-governments-adoption-of-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/ (Only found out by chance that Starmer apparently said: My national curriculum review will see all schools teach Holocaust https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/starmer-my-national-curriculum-review-will-make-all-schools-teach-about-holocaust/ )

So more often those you puff themselves up by making grandiose statements or high profile accusation as they see themselves as in the forefront of a particular cause do more damage that good. And when you are the PM if you then appear to only think one group has the right to have its rights defended you end up crossing the line yourself. eg saying starvation being a legitimate weapon of war.

In all honesty so much of this Labour bravado about stamping down on anti semitism isn't really about this itself, it is political signally that that Starmer's Labour party is not, has not connection to, and will take every opportunity to say we aren't Jeremy Corbyn! It would be childish if it wasn't the party that is now the UK Government.

Someone who is willing to mouth absurdities for the sake of signalling their virtue and progressiveness is demonstrating they have no compunction in lying, and therefore no deeply held moral compass.

I was suprised to see Labour Women's Declaration say this:

LWD have warmly welcomed the government’s clear commitments to protecting single-sex spaces & services, halving violence against women & girls and full implementation of the Cass Review’s recommendations. What strategies are now needed in order to deliver these 3 commitments?

I find that toe curlingly embarrassing to feel they have to be comlimentary and say something that as far as I am aware is not true.

Clear commitments? Where, when?

https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/lwd-fringe-event-sunday-22nd-september-1-30-3pm-labour-womens-declaration-where-next/ (I think this is a member's only meeting?)

But fringe meeting is open https://www.tickettailor.com/events/labourwomensdeclaration/1344415

They have committed to halving VAWG I think. The others? No. LWD have either not been paying attention or they've sold (us) out.

I suspect that LWD are seeing what they need to see.