Kemi elected leader of the Tory party

[cariadlet]

Let's hope she really holds Labour to account about women's rights and the dangers of gender ideology.

I don’t think Kemi and I have many common views beyond opposing gender identity ideology but I suspect she’ll be a fabulous opponent for Kier Starmer at PMQs and it feels like it’s been ages since we had a truly oppositional opposition so perhaps both parties will end up better for it?

Labour surely can’t keep up the IDPOL crap when their leader is male, pale and stale and the conservatives have a (relatively!) young black female leader?

If Labour can get back to projects like Sure Start and building affordable homes and undoing some of Goves work (thus improving teacher retention in state schools) that would be great for everyone, all this fannying about with EDI stuff just causes bigger social divides and increases resentment.

The current CB thing is completely nonsensical! Surely that’s an easy reform to make?

This is great - an articulate and thoughtful leader for a change. Hopefully she'll be great opposition!

Well isn’t Dawn a treat. Can’t even be gracious in respecting a fellow black woman in politics without getting nasty

Gosh that's nasty

What is it with Labour MPs and this kind of stuff

Being anti-trans does not make you pro-woman ...

And being pro-woman doesn't make you "anti-trans". I would have left here long ago if the predominant sentiment was to make life hard for trans-identified people. I don't recall seeing anyone on Mumsnet arguing for trans-identied people to be discriminated against in employment and housing, or not protected by police from abuse. But when other people's rights, to women's spaces or free speech for example, are attacked, those rights need to be defended.

Above all, from my perspective as a parent, I want to see trans-identified people protected from ideological based medicine and for truth to be spoken about the harms of hormone treatments and surgery. If such treatments can be demonstrated clearly to have benefits which outweigh the harms in some cases, I suppose I will have to accept them. At the moment, the harms appear to me to outweigh any benefits in all the cases I have direct knowledge of.

Good grief - and we wonder why so many people are unable to engage in civilised debate. If this is the response of a senior Labour woman parliamentarian you can only imagine what the racists out on the street are saying.

Dawn Butler is a bloody disgrace.

No, she didn't! She said that business regulation was too excessive. Meanwhile the interviewer tried to insert Maternity pay in the middle of her outlining her previous point. She was trying to explain that all benefits are a function of taxation and was then going on to explain how this system can work as a detriment, and how it could possibly be improved.

The job of journalists in our 24 hour news culture has become to goad and twist and spin. The best ones don't do this, though, even if most now do because it creates sensationalism and headlines - on which the public love to feed.

That she said something she actually didn't has now become a common truth.

A good choice for leader of the opposition but I hope she never becomes PM. She's very right-wing and supports several anti-women policies. No thanks.

That's a horrible thing for her to say regardless of what her or Kemi's politics are.

So what job will she give Jenrick? Home Secretary?

Imagine the outcry if a white MP made that comment?

It’s an appalling thing to say regardless of what side of the political spectrum.

I don't recall seeing anyone on Mumsnet arguing for trans-identied people to be discriminated against in employment and housing

You must have missed this thread & the multiple previous ones where posters were doing exactly that in agreement with Kellie-Jay Keen.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186900-trans-activists-gatecrash-womens-rights-rally-as-they-protest-speech-by-kellie-jay-keen-at-let-women-speak-event-in-the-home-of-suffragette-emily-davison?page=1

No, I think you're trying to rewrite history. And so is she.

If Kemi was talking about business regulation, and her comments were not at all relevant to maternity pay, why do you think she made the following comment in the same conversation:

"We need to have more personal responsibility - there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies."

Why would she hark back to a time when there was no maternity pay if she wasn't talking about maternity pay.

Just because she knows what a woman is, doesn't mean she gives a shit about women's rights.

I think what she's said on this topic is very preliminary, which makes it very difficult to answer the public's questions.

In general, I tend to think she's right with a lot of the problems she identifies. It's a problem that the way educational provision is set up creates a hierarchy of needs. A myopic focus on mainstream integration seems to be hugely problematic in conjunction with that. And maybe more to the point, it doesn't seem to be helping the children, any of them.

Reasonably though the public wants to know what her answers are.

And here is the problem - she doesn't, couldn't, and shouldn't be expected to have the answers to complex questions like that on her own. What's clear is that there needs to be another very clear headed, pragmatic look at how education works for all children. And that's something that will have to be done by a group of people with some expertise, who are not hemmed in by ideological policy assumptions.

There is no way to get to that until people are willing to recognize that there is a need to rethink. And unfortunately a lot of organizations will be too scared to agree to that.

But it's nice to see that someone is at least trying to think about how policy operates at a deeper level, rather than just the optics.

I think this is on the right track, but I also thought that part of what she was getting at was that the number of regulations on business were affecting their productivity, at least in some cases. And that there are other models for maternity provision that should be looked at.

Perhaps I am being unfairly judgemental of Dawn Butler here but I can’t help but see this comment as sour grapes that the historical record for ‘First Black Woman Leader of a UK political party’ has been nabbed by a) someone who is not Dawn Butler and b) a Conservative.

As the kids are wont to say, this seems like pure cope from Butler,

She’s not for me on most political points, but she is good on gender (critical) stuff.

And despite not liking most of her political views, I genuinely LOVE that she a black woman who is a mother of three leading the Conservative Party. It’s a real win whatever your political viewpoint. It’s really quite revolting (and I say this as someone who has voted for Labour for many, many years!) that Labour has only ever managed white male leaders in this day and age.

Firstly - thank goodness Jenrick didn't win. (Sorry he is just so terrible, not having him is a priority. Like not having Trump.)

Secondly - brilliant to have an articulate woman leading a party. With the plus that she is a WoC.

But, if I heard correctly, although she won, in fact only just offer 50% of Tory members who could vote did vote.

So as we really need a good opposition to Labour's (not sure what to call it) agenda I think she will be really powerful, but worry about factions in the Tory party sniping at her and briefing the Tory papers. Like they did with Theresa May.

Bur firstly to show that she really is committed to Women's rights, she needs to get some GC Tories onto the Women & Equalities Committee. At the moment there are none. This really brings into question their real committment to women's rights.

But the Tory Party should be able to do well because Labour keeps on making blunders. Even those who think the WFA should be means tested think that by announcing it so early, pre budget etc., just makes it look mean spirited. And now the Budget has upset others, not all, so for the first time in years, an opinion poll has the Tories more popular than Labour. (ANd Reform took a seat from Labour in a Council election.)

I just wonder she does seem to be quite an independent thinker etc., how hard she going to find it to have to represent a "Tory Party" view, rather than her own.

When's the first PM Questions in the HoC? Cant wait. Go get that hollow smarmy suited vaccum who depressingly is our PM, Kemi!

Pleased she won and interested to see how she gets on

re Dawn Butler - Labour women are always so mean spirited, and cant help themselves implying other women really aren't sucessful, or admirable, or roll models.

I was going to comment as to whether this was also something to do different attitudes and perceptions of Black African and Black Afro Caribbean women in the UK, but according to the article, the original criticism was from a London-based Nigerian journalist.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-mp-shares-post-saying-kemi-badenoch-represents-white-supremacy-in-blackface/ar-AA1to8w5

I just don't understand how people like Butler don't have the political and social nous to see how comments like that will come across.

Even if she feels super nasty about it, where's the sense of preserving her own dignity?

As I said on a similar thread today, she is VERY disliked in her own constituency and has been for some time. The demographics have changed in her constituency over the last few years and it seems to be less "Tory farmer types" and more liberal and left wing more socially and environmentally aware.

She only just clung onto her seat recently, it was very close indeed.

I think she's made some unpopular comments and voting over her time as an MP and is rarely seen in her constituency apart from the occasional photo opportunity. She doest really care about the area and her family don't even live here!

She's spot on about maternity pay. Abolish it altogether and let the strongest survive. Maternity pay leads to overpopulation - stop having children that you can't afford. Those that can afford children will have them, and those who just want to have time off work - the workshy - won't be subsidised by ordinary taxpayers.