Lib Dems dragged kicking and screaming to the right side of history.

[HelenaWaiting]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/30/lib-dem-members-criticise-trans-exclusionary-rule-change-for-party-elections

It’s incredible how stupid and ill-informed people are willing to advertise themselves as. Quotas were the entire reason FWS brought the case to the Supreme Court in the first place, and all of those people in the article have queued up to announce to the world they didn’t know that, didn’t understand it, or don’t accept it.

Some Lib Dem MPs are understood to be perplexed at the sudden turnaround.

I mean, how?! How are they perplexed?! How is this “sudden”, 6 months on from the ruling? Do they not read, at all?!

It’s like putting a mirror in the monkey pen at the zoo.

Far from being "excluded', it sounds as though trans people could have two bites of the cherry - for example, a trans identifying woman could presumably stand either in the trans quota, or in the women's quota by virtue of her sex? Even if it's only the trans quota they're eligible for, they're still no worse off than anyone else.

This is part of the additional privilege aspect of the demands of some extreme transgender activists. It is like the changing room scenario. That group of male people have access to all the provisions whereas no other group has that access. It is discriminatory.

Those male people demand no boundaries, no access should be denied to them. Someone in that group of people can access the male provision, the specific provision for LGBT people if there is one and also demand access to female provision.

Well said. Advertising their utter incompetence and inability to understand basic concepts like the ‘law’ is not going to be a selling point.

I wonder which bit of “you can’t count men as women” they are struggling with?

At a local level, many LibDems do fantastic work on parish and district councils.

Further up the tree, they seem to lose all reason, common sense and connection with reality.

There is no point to the LD they will never win an election

Might consider voting for them again

Plaid Cymru is cut from the same cloth. I've asked many times for clarification on their stance that trans women are women. Deafening silence.

It’s like putting a mirror in the monkey pen at the zoo.

Not All Monkeys.

(Macaques are quite good with mirrors, but I'll grant you most of the others - even capuchins, which are bright enough to have worked out 'equal pay for equal work'.)

Why is it that Liberal Voice for Women's statement is wholely supportive of the change rather than highlighting that the revised wording is still discriminatory and unnecessarily trans-exclusive. It should not say anything about cis women or cis men, it should say "biologically female, irrespective of gender" ie inclusive of transmen and nonbinary AFAB, and "biologically male, irrespective of gender" ie inclusive of transwomen and nonbinary AMAB.

The central lib dem organisation has deliberately chosen an intentionally trans-exclusive wording as a straw-man to ensure that outrage against it is properly stoked up, so that they can get an overwhelming mandate to stop having to care about proportionality in representation at all and can go back to having no more than 15% women on their committees.

Regrettably I think they could hold the balance of power at the next election. Labs/Libs/Greens - left coalition.

In fairness to Liberal Voice for Women, they've been fighting this issue for a long time, and the change now proposed has only come about because of their efforts. It's not perfect, and will need to be challenged further in due course, but it's got the Party's transactivists in a rare tizzy because they can see that the law has trapped them.

LVW have made clear that the "cis" language isn't acceptable (or legal). See for example this quote from The House Magazine: "A spokesperson from the group said that the new quota “guarantees those with a trans identity at least one place on every committee over 10 people, despite the fact trans people are only 0.5 per cent of the population and that there is no evidence they are underrepresented on Lib Dem committees.

"They added that “cis” is not a term recognised in law, and is “a label many women would reject and – given everyone has a sex – is unnecessarily exclusionary against those with trans identities”. "