Politically Centre Left But Can't Bear Them

[GenderCriticalParent]

Hi.
Took a break from gender critical X a year ago. Went back recently & noticed most X GC accounts now appear politically right wing. Glinner is retweeting Elon Musk 🫤
I joined BlueSky, hoping it was more reasonable, but even that is full of gender ideologists criticising the UK for the Ciara Watkin court result in language I can only describe as worthy of someone who needs psychiatric treatment.

I am gender critical, but I am a social democrat. I vote Labour usually and dislike right wing politics however it has dawned on me that the only parties speaking out against pernitious gender ideology are right wing ones.

Is it best to simply not vote? I'm not sure I could turn to the 'dark side' 🙃

I feel much the same.
I will never vote tory.
Labour are a treacherous let down.
Lib dems are mad regarding sex.
Greens now utter lunatics.
Reform - well do I even need to comment?
Unless labour or lib dems sort themselves out (greens are too far beyond any hope) I can’t vote in any future general election.
Locally our few lib dem councillors are the most useful.

I agree and share your experience, sadly.

@Cerialkiller thank you for answering my question.
There are people with more recent fortunes such as James Dyson and Anthony Bamford who own large houses and lots of land. Would they also be included in this revolution?
Personally I don’t think seizing land and houses is a great idea unless it’s taken for debts or unpaid taxes - there have been some pretty unpleasant regimes who have done this.

Politics on both the left and right have fractured, not so much over policy as over identity.

Power now sits in the centre — among the media networks, bureaucrats and financial institutions — all speaking the same language of “stability” and “growth,” and quietly deciding what’s acceptable to say or think.

It feels less like a position and more like an imposition — an ideology disguised as moderation.

No wonder we all feel politically homeless. We are not governed by the people we elect but by the unelected networks that outlast every election — the bureaucrats, financiers, and media power-brokers who decide what counts.

Just look at how our leaders across the political spectrum actually operate, and who they answer to, and it starts to make sense.

The Communists are sane on this issue, if they stand in your area. They didn't in mine at the last locals but I emailed to say that if they had, I would have voted for them.

communistparty.org.uk/2025/03/08/international-womens-day-2025/

I was specifically talking about title holders not the 'rich' specifically as a bit of a thought experiment about the consequences of the dissolution of the monarchy.

It was an example of how It's easy to make sweeping statements as a young person but then as you get older to realise that these things (like removing the royal family) are actually very complicated and would likely have far reaching consequences. Eg if you removed the royals from their positions what would happen to 'their' land and wealth. Could they keep it or would it return to the public. What would happen to all the historical buildings and mature park land. Could we trust our government to protect it, SHOULD it be protected? Etc. would this expended to include all the dukes, counts etc and their land/holdings? If they refuse would we have a revolution a la the french and order a guillotine?

I should stress that I'm not a royalist, I actually think they should be phased out and the whole thing is kind of backwards in the modern world but they are here. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

What would happen to all the historical buildings and mature park land. Could we trust our government to protect it

@Cerialkiller the answer to that is if the government seize it which is what I presume you are saying would happen, then I doubt they’d look after it as it would represent all that they hated.
If the properties were overrun by a mob then they would plunder them (‘we found this tiara in the attic” says someone on Antiques Roadshow in 2130) and then they’d fall into ruin.
If the new government confiscated them then no doubt the new government bigwigs would move in.
Were such a thing to happen I don’t think families with recently made fortunes would be spared. Why would they be?

The economic Left in the West really only had any political power during the Cold War when the ‘threat’ and military might of communist countries meant that the economic Right was tempered. As soon as the wall came down and socialist economics no longer offered a viable alternative to extreme capitalism, at least not one backed up by military and political might, the free marketeers got full control. That’s why wealth has now become so concentrated amongst a small group of billionaires and a handful of effectively monopolistic companies. These threaten to bring down any national economy or politicians who try to come up with ways to redistribute the wealth, even just a little bit. There is nothing new here, it’s just history repeating itself. Wealth concentrates, the politicians can no longer keep the hordes at bay, the hordes revolt and the whole thing starts all over again. Communism, for a while, offered a handy ballast for the Western middle class that gave the boomers unprecedented social provision and jeans and cheap McDs in exchange for (most of them) not voting for full blown socialised economies. Now the jeans are shit and McDs becoming out of reach and the hordes are realising the Left, the meaningful, economic Left, doesn’t actually exist anymore. For a while it clad itself in identity politics bullshit, as if that was going to feed people and improve the NHS somehow. But people have seen through that now. Especially the children of the boomers who are working like crazy but don’t enjoy the same quality of life as their parents did who worked half as hard.

I was a centrist, I’ve voted for both labour and conservatives before. But the lefts habit of never ever answering the question and resorting to ad hominem attacks has really bothered me for years tbh. It feels so dishonest if you can’t engage with any subject matter without accusing your opponent for being a bigot or enthralled by the rich. I think the lefts habit have lost the ability to debate through sheer fucking laziness tbh.

@Cerialkiller I think you are giving an unknown online blob way too much headspace. Yes, you may get thrown out of the unknown online blob. But does that really matter?

I could really do with meeting some right-wingers in real life. I live in the right area for that but everyone I meet, or at least the vocal ones, are very left. And they tend to be most vocal about the issues that bugged me most - so I'm hearing their opposing point of view and then try very hard to distract from any political conversation.

@EmeraldRoulette I think there's an issue - definitely from my observation - that people who lean right tend to have a range of interests, of which politics isn't necessarily the most important one. The people I know who make everything about politics all lean very left, and they're the people who hog every conversation.

You see this on Reddit (and I know Reddit's moderation regime contributes to this) but if you go to US state subreddits - if you read the Utah subreddit you'd think the state had the same basic politics as San Francisco. Of course we can tell from election results that isn't true. Closer to home, the Northern Ireland subreddit would give you the impression that unionists are a tiny minority instead of half of the population.

Fwiw I think there's a lot of flux among all the parties lately and they are trying to figure out new coalitions and combinations of policies.

The "right" is obviously split between the Tories and Reform which may lead to different directions.

In similar circumstances about five years ago I got off social media (like you I found it to be furious ranting on all sides) and started alternately buying several different weekly/monthly political and current affairs magazines from different schools of thought. Prospect, the Spectator, the Economist, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman, the Critic... Mixed in with buying a different Sunday paper every now and again... And just seeing who I thought was making good sense and what themes were cropping up, irrespective of preconceived ideas about left/right.

@SionnachRuadh yes, I tend to keep an eye on the ones keeping quiet in a political conversation. So I realise it may not be reflective. Also, I wonder if some people are just agreeing and lying. There's a particularly loud person (in a group I see twice a month) and I don't know if anyone would be bothered enough to challenge her.

I think if anything has been shown in this whole debacle is that most people give too much headspace to the unknown online blob. Im not online so im more concerned about alienating my real friends and isolating my children in my very liberal city. I can't be bothered with the drama tbh, I am armed with many facts however and can slip in a fact correction or a 'im just so concerned about....x' easily enough. the few times i have broken cover I have not had a good response. They mean well they are just where I was a few years ago.

You won't agree with one party about everything so choose the closest match.

I have no strong views re gender politics, most people aren't trans, neither am I. Im much more worried about whether an ambulance will show up if me or my family ever need one.

@Cerialkiller "I think if anything has been shown in this whole debacle is that most people give too much headspace to the unknown online blob"

so far, on this thread, I think it's only been you who's concerned about the unknown online blob?

I'm like you OP. I hate that some people have this need to belong to a political group and because of their views on gender they drift over to the right because they're more accepting of them, even though they don't agree with a lot of their policies. Then they start changing their opinions on those issues to align. It's depressing.

I notice Elon Musk shared that drawing from Colin Wright about how he hadn't changed but the left has, but in reality he's supporting Tommy Robinson and the far right in Germany etc.

I agree 100%.

Back in the 1970s, leftie men used to call feminist politics ‘diversionary’. They claimed to support women’s rights, but overthrowing the western military-industrialist complex etc was more immediately important. They promised as soon as they’d achieved that they would be right on the case to end the oppression of women.
Meanwhile, put the kettle on, luv, we could do with a cup of tea …

It was enraging, but I think that actually helped to fuel the Women’s Liberation movement, which achieved so much for us all.

And I have to say that, back then, I never heard any man say men should be allowed into women’s changing rooms etc if that’s what they got off on. The worst sexists I knew wouldn’t have dared try that!

I was too left-wing to join the Labour Party, but I did vote Labour where the local candidate had a chance of winning, because it was actually quite a decent party back then. Tony Blair and his mates put an end to that.

After years of activism with environmental groups, I finally joined the Green Party. That turned out well, didn’t it? 🤦‍♀️

The people who call themselves left-wing today, while assaulting women speakers, are a disgrace.

So here I am, in the politically homeless crowd, doing what I can by signing petitions, taking part in consultations, writing to politicians, making small donations — none of it amounting to much as an individual, though I hope all adding up with everyone else’s.

I think the time is ripe for somebody to set up a sane left-wing or centre-left environmentalist party, also committed to women’s rights (a major concern because of the current dominance of male supremacism). We have to have better options than the current mess.

I’d vote for them too. Also for the SDP, which seems quite radical these days in (gasp) supporting women’s rights to privacy, fair play in sports etc.

@JazzyJelly do you genuinely want a communist government?

I am interested in @JazzyJelly answer to this also.

Not particularly. Do you think we're likely to get one if I vote for them at the county council elections?

I certainly would never vote communist. But I would definitely vote SDP.

Reading their policies, I personally think they are saying a lot of the right things. They are absolutely tiny though in terms of membership and candidates that they put up at elections.

They seem to be slightly left leaning economically speaking but small "c" conservative, culturally.

The "socialism with conservative aesthetics" market is definitely underserved. There's a definite slice of the electorate that's open to it, but the SDP is tiny and the other force that wants to appeal to those voters is George Galloway's Workers Party, if you prefer Saddam Hussein to Clement Attlee.

Maybe it's a style that's better suited to criticism than being an electoral alternative. Peter Hitchens has a pretty substantial audience.