In quite the turnaround Scottish Labour say the support Sandie Peggie, and would not support the GRR bill "knowing what they know now"!

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

x.com/holyroodsources/status/1891851822278590711?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

FFS. What is different now? It's not as if they weren't told over and over again what the consequences would be. 🙄

Fully agree.

Obviously there is no "right" way to step onto and then cross the golden bridge. However, Wes Streeting's approach is by far the cleanest option: say "I was wrong to say that TWAW" and apologise for having been. Then everything you say after that point comes from the tone of this clear first step. Very few people (possibly nobody?) goes from completely TWAW to full peak in one swift move, so even after stepping onto the golden bridge people are still likely to say things that don't make sense. However, the clarity of that first step with "I was wrong" makes a huge difference.

It also helps people to contextualise the receipts from prior to this point. Again, Wes Streeting is a good example. Nobody has forgotten his involvement in the FB group that effectively witch-hunted women who dared to say that there were 2 sexes and that this is sometimes important in laws etc. However, "I was wrong" goes a long way. IIRC, Rosie Duffield said that he has apologised to her directly - presumably this FB group was part of that personal apology.

Contrast this clarity with the Labour leaders and they have ring-fenced their "I was wrong" specifically on the vote (intimated that was Nicola Sturgeon's fault, not theirs) and then suggested that they couldn't possibly have known then what they know now. Crossing the golden bridge with that particular first step means that they will soon be making as little or as much sense as John Swinney on it all, trying to navigate a "compromise" and arguing the case for single sex spaces that can be identified into. Hopefully they will realise that this was a false start and that they can retake that first step.

Edited for clarity.

To add: I remember Gillian Keegan doing something similar regarding a false start... She then lost her seat so we'll never know if she would have attempted a reboot.

I'm assuming she had to be helped a lot by those around her (it's notable that the signature on the schools' draft Gender Questioning Children guidance was Kemi Badenoch's, despite Keegan being the education secretary) to get to the point where she eventually said TWANW. However, she prefixed this statement with "I've always been clear that", which had the unfortunate effect of exposing her newly found "clarity" for exactly what it was... meaningless. So when she then went on Radio 4 and started saying that TWANW and explaining that she had always assumed that all TW had had "the op" it wasn't a massive surprise. In other words for her TWANW until they have an op, at which point they become one. Yes, she had one foot on the bridge but with "clarity" like that it would have been a very long crossing. She'd have been better off saying she was still getting her head around it all, and that she also couldn't understand the GRA's position on it IMO. I'd have respected her for that. It would have come across as a strength, not a weakness, because the law doesn't make sense. Instead, her "clarity" simply showed that she didn't make sense.

Edited to correct one of my "TWANW" points, where I accidentally missed the all important N out!

Yes, an apology would clear the ground.

As far as I can see, most Labour members are still very much in favour of women being forced to share changing rooms with men if the men are very unhappy about changing with other men.

So the leadership are fighting the members on this.

Having mouthed absurd speeches about the most marginalised for years, though, you could forgive members for not understanding where this sudden handbrake turn in policy has come from.

They need to show their working.

Why are they supporting Nurse Peggie all of a sudden? Ten minutes ago Nandy was saying rapists should go in womens jails if they wanted to, Starmer was spluttering that a small number of women do have penises, and Streeting was spearheading a witch hunt for wrong thinking women.

Now they want to reverse all of that without setting out why. I don't think it'll.work. Party members think they're just pandering to non members, and non members think they're insincere.

An apology, and an explanation that women are human beings with rights, may be a good start.

Perfectly put.

They need to show their working.

This is key. I would love to hear Wes Streeting on this. Yes, his apology was clear and, apart from saying the phrase "trans child" (FFS 🤬 I'm still waiting for him to drop that one), he's been saying things that make sense since then and it took guts to do it.

However, unless he is clear to party members on why he had a change of heart/mind, they are missing out on vital information that might help them. Perhaps his was a personal realisation that what he previously thought was helpful for LGB people like himself was actually causing a lot of harm? If so, let's hear this please.

Are there any Scottish politicians (of any party) who have a history of having been vocally TWAW and are now clearly TWANW? If so, hopefully some of them would be prepared to share their peaking journey. TBF, I would hope a Westminster politician sharing theirs might also have an impact in Scotland - when some politicians in Holyrood tried to argue that the Cass Report was irrelevant in Scotland they were quickly put back in their box! We might be different nations but we're not different species 😂

What is the Golden Bridge? I am behind the times and have only just found out that pink and blue are the colours of the trans movement.

As for the politicians' change of mind - expediency and votes come to mind.

To offer or allow a "golden bridge" means to offer a way for an opponent to retreat from a conflict rather than feel they have no option but to fight to the death, or a way to change their stance on an issue rather than feel that they have no choice but to adhere rigidly to their original position.

Based on a maxim in Sun Tzu's 'Art of War'.

Completely agree. No wonder Labour are battling their members on this now, after years of pandering to the bullshit. It will be interesting to see if they can turn it around. I think they can now see they need to if they want to get elected. I also hope that even those who have only flip flopped on this because they can finally see the tide turning will start to realise just how impossible and damaging this ideology is. Recent high profile cases obviously help with that. So people might start switching sides because they realise it is politic, but as the nonsense continues the penny will eventually drop that a fully TRA approved approach really is untenable, in part because whatever you do, it will never be enough. I suspect Wes Streeting has long since realised this.

Why is anyone worrying about giving politicians a golden bridge on this issue? We demand (and get) their metaphorical heads for the most minor peccadillo, that's the nature of the job. Women have been raped, abused, beaten up, hounded out of jobs and public life as a direct result of this policy. It is serious. In fretting about giving them another chance after having proven themselves utterly stupid, craven and useless at best and downright dangerous at worst we're just sending the message that it wasn't important and we don't matter, they can do what they want to us with no real consequences. I think my rights are just a bit more important than an expense scandal. Get them out, replace with someone better. That's politics.

As I posted up thread check the details Jackie Ballie [deputy leader] went and had a photo opp and conversation with LWD. Unthinkable a few years ago. I imagine it was more than a bit awkward. Was an apology made .. who knows. It has to come in some form though.

The Streeting path is optimum. Obviously for him the fact as soon as he showed sides of switching he was targeted with homophobic stuff and the TAs teamed up with Gaza types to try and get him defeated in his seat it was a rapid shift. I think he is pretty fully peaked he is just being civil for political purposes. He read and understood Cass. He knows long term the TA stuff is going to be a disaster, but more than that he knows it is wrong and gay men like him are being targeted.

As for what happened in conference it is important to note that Labour delegates and membership are DIFFERENT. Delegates are way more politically active and ambitious and more likely to be captured.
Same as what happened in Unison. The active delegates are captured ordinary members probably do not what is going on, but most would stand with Peggie.

There is still a lot of policy of no debate at local level in some local parties. Others are controlled by LWD supporters especially in Scotland. The Scottish Women's Conference became LWD friendly a few years back and keeps passing gender crit motions . What we are seeing is the further development of vicious civil war inside Labour over Gender.

With the Scottish leadership flipping this has huge impact elsewhere. It is now clear that gender is going to be a big weapon for Scottish Labour in 2026 to attack SNP from one side and the Greens and Lib Dems from another. To do that the leadership needs to address and debate with membership and convert them. Otherwise Reform and the Tories will say Labour members still hate women.

One showdown will be the Scottish Conference 2026 next year in the runup to the election. Have no doubt the women's conference will put forward another contentious motion. So Sarwar has to do something. Either fight to get motion passed or look absurd going into the election. He has a year to sort something out. If he is sensible that means mobilising in local parties to get a more prowomen position and delegates elected.

All of this has implications elsewhere. The arrival of Labour LGB a week or so ago adds fuel to the conflict. What are Welsh Labour going to do? LWD are mobilising to try and shift opinion inside the national Labour women's conference.

It is only going to get more chaotic.

More fallout from the fight.

Sarwar and Swinney must now accept the circle cannot be squared on gender debate - Euan McColm
Appearing alongside his deputy Jackie Baillie on the Holyrood Sources podcast, Sarwar declared his support for Peggie and the right of all women to have access to single sex spaces on the basis of biology. This was something he’d always been clear about. Apparently.

Sarwar went on to say that, had he known two years ago what he knows now, he and his party would not have backed gender law reform.

As if gaslighting the women who’d implored him to listen in 2022 wasn’t pitiful enough, Sarwar went on to say he’d taken the word of the Scottish Government that the legislation he was supporting did not harm women’s rights.

It was the sort of performance that haunts a politician. He will, years from now, wake in the night and remember the time he deployed the “I’m too gullible to be let out on my own” defence.

https://archive.is/g4jAG

'Sarwar's gender reform U-turn is a 'betrayal to trans members'
It comes after the Scottish Labour leader and his deputy claimed on the Holyrood Sources podcast that he would not have voted for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill “knowing what we know now”.
But a conference motion which backed guidance on single-sex spaces in schools was rejected, causing a row between party members.
Duncan Hothersall, who runs the Scottish Labour Against Bigotry group told The Herald on Sunday: “The U-turn on gender recognition reform is just a betrayal. To say that any facts have been changed since that is a nonsense.
“If this is just about trying to tidy up a really difficult area of policy, fair enough, but talk to people, talk to LGBT and to trans people.”
He said yesterday’s motion rejection showed “the leadership didn’t have the membership with it”.
Mr Sarwar should “apologise” for the U-turn and move on, he said.

https://archive.is/97zeH

The Sandie Peggie case has helped Anas Sarwar grow a pair when it comes to gender self-ID
The Peggie case is the very embodiment of the gender woo-woo that has inculcated our public sector landscape as the so-called Stonewall law became accepted as fact. I shouldn’t have to tell the leader of the Scottish Labour Party that the institutional capture on gender self-ID had already happened. Practice had leapt ahead of the law long before MSPs passed the GRR. And it had been championed and legitimised by a then first minister who repeated the mantra that ‘trans women are women’ with a maniacal fervour – and no debate – that meant those around her just accepted fantasy as fact. And I’m looking at you, John Swinney, given you say you have no regrets.
https://www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,the-sandie-peggie-case-has-helped-anas-sarwar-grow-a-pair-when-it-comes-to-gender-selfid

As for what happened in conference it is important to note that Labour delegates and membership are DIFFERENT. Delegates are way more politically active and ambitious and more likely to be captured.

Thanks, yes, that's helpful.

When I was a member of the Greens policy was passed at conference by votes like this that often came down to a matter of half a dozen -or fewer! - votes. Most members don't attend conference, most of those that do won't attend every session, so the votes represent a tiny, tiny proportion of the most committed.

That makes more sense. So it's not that a majority of members back Dr Upton over Sandie Peggie. It's that the tiny committed numbers at conference and voting on the subject do so.

Okay.

Sarwar went on to say he’d taken the word of the Scottish Government that the legislation he was supporting did not harm women’s rights.
It was the sort of performance that haunts a politician. He will, years from now, wake in the night and remember the time he deployed the “I’m too gullible to be let out on my own” defence.

A fantastic part of a very strong argument.

I'm not so worried about apologies, because I tend to think they're only really meaningful as part of personal reconciliation. Apologising to some specific person you've wronged, great; apologising to the whole world as Tony Blair used to do, not so much.

The first step is to admit you've been wrong. Politicians are very bad at this. For some reason they have to pretend that what they say now is consistent with what they've always said.

But then the important point is to show your workings. Streeting hasn't quite done this, but he's probably best placed to. There are things he could say that might even be true:

• I lacked information and this turned out to be much more complicated than I thought
• I made certain assumptions that turned out to be false (eg, lots of people think you need to have had surgery to get a GRC)
• I listened to ABC because I believed they were the experts in the field, and it turned out their advice was flawed
• I didn't listen to XYZ because I was told they were fringe, and it turned out they had important points that I should have considered

He wouldn't even have to say "I looked at an opinion poll and saw how horribly unpopular this is", though I'm sure that was a factor.

The trouble with doing a reverse ferret without showing your workings is that you run the risk of people wondering what prompted this move from vocally TWAW to TWANW (at least in certain circumstances), and asking if you were lying then or you're lying now.

Fluffing that probably cost Penny Mordaunt the prime ministership - she was only a handful of votes behind Liz Truss, and the Truss people went hard after her for flip flopping on the issue. Having a plausible explanation would have shifted the three or four MPs she needed.

I don't exactly trust Anas Sarwar, but he's not a stupid man and he's got a chance to make this convincing.

Yes. I've no need for apologies based on a matter of principle. This is politics, for the most part. But the fact is that an admission of being wrong seems necessary to explain the swerve and change in policy.

Another solution would be to refocus on women's rights. Bold, eh?!

But, for example, Labour supporting the victim of sexual assault to have privacy, dignity, and safety by being assured a single sex changing room, by describing how SA is a common experience for women, and how they need some adjustments to ensure they can live, work, and function as full members of society.

So far they've still not really managed to shift the empathy to women. It's all still quite abstract. Despite the fact that everyone can see Sandie Peggie and Dr Upton as very real embodiments of the very real issues.

Exactly. Make it concrete. The queer theorists can wibble on endlessly about their philosophical concepts of what makes the essence of a woman.

They don't want to have a conversation about cock owners in women's changing rooms. Which is the immediate issue.

At this point, Sandy Brindley of RCS remains in post, the Scottish Government have not yet (I'm told) met with the board of ERCC following the damning independent review. The funding guidelines for rape crisis services remains the same as previously. Despite public outcry and claims that everything will be reviewed, the SG continue on their merry way.

The SPS policy still allows for violent males to be placed in the female prison estate despite the outcry over Isla Bryson.

Schools across Scotland continue to present children with ideological driven nonsense as part of PSHE despite public outcry over the information harvested from children during their lessons.

Women are still having to argue about the definition of women in court.

And of course, NHS Scotland.

The Scottish Government will continue to nod and say gravely 'oh yes, lessons will be learned' and then continue with what they're doing because they could not give one single fuck.

Apologies are meaningless. There needs to be a clean house.

They can shut their lying mouths and actually DO SOMETHING to fix the crap their insanity has dumped 50% of the population into. Then, perhaps, I might start to believe they mean what they are saying. Right now, I can't believe them. It's just words. Its just them bumping their gums and burbling platitudes. Words are easy.

MBM policy have sent a letter to Sarwar and Baillie.

https://x.com/mbmpolicy/status/1893594000675766349

I can't find it to link on their website yet, but it's pointing out the issues that are at stake wrt the ForWomen Scotland Supreme Court case, re the definition of sex as biological sex.

The point of offering a golden bridge is purely pragmatic. It’s not about being kind to those who wish to change position, it’s about ensuring you have more people on your side when it comes to a vote/battle etc. Otherwise if it’s a fight to the death, they will continue to vote/fight against you.

Just a reminder that, despite saying that "he favours the protection of "single-sex spaces based on biological sex"", during that same and very recent interview, Anas Sarwar "refused to comment on whether that should mean that trans women are automatically excluded from female only spaces such as changing rooms".

He may or may not be on the road to Damascus but one thing is certain - he has yet to see the light.

Anas Sarwar calls for clear guidance on single-sex spaces - BBC News

https://the-conflictexpert.com/2019/03/03/giving-your-opponent-a-golden-bridge/

I know it's already been highlighted once already from fromorbit's excellent info above, but it's worth echoing this bit again:

He will, years from now, wake in the night and remember the time he deployed the “I’m too gullible to be let out on my own” defence.

Without a decent, plausible set of workings out (the hypothetical Streeting example above from SionnachRuadh ticks this box), any politician who goes for a half-cut version that leans on this ridiculous defence is not fit for office. I hope that journalists start asking some very awkward questions that unpick this point, with the politicians on camera to answer them. Even a TRA-leaning journalist... like this, which is still one of my favourite moments of political fuckwittery on the subject:

x.com/PeterAdamSmith/status/1620051699900755970?t=T_C9RaqEOAyqOxVTIAlqzw&s=19

Arguably, it's also a great moment of journalism fuckwittery. The thread that follows this clip on X demonstrates how unaware this journalist is of exactly what he's captured here.

Wasn’t it to do with the weighting of the votes (a bit like the US electoral college)? I may be misremembering but I’ve got a hazy recollection from last year that the local Labour Party branch votes were outweighed by the unions’ vote?

Interesting article in the Critic about this apology, if that's what it is, and apologies in general

https://thecritic.co.uk/anas-sarwar-should-apologise-to-women/