Rishi Sunak said…

Our city council is corrupt as fuck. Can’t blame the Tories for all the off plan overseas development.

A credible opposition is really important and up here there is no opposition at all because the council is almost entirely red.

Labour have failed at providing an opposition in Westminster too, they’ve agreed with almost everything the Tories have done EXCEPT Labour believe that women have penises.

I’ll never vote Tory but I won’t vote Labour either (and I used to be a member).

Thank you for taking time to reply.

I understand where you are coming from. I work in education and all I see is support for girls. Maybe that is different in other establishments.

It just doesn't feature in most people's lives.

Will it really get that far in sport? Isn't that worst case scenario and the reality will be somewhat in between.

Starmer isn't afraid of anything. He's full on TWAW, most vulnerable minority etc. Unfortunately, people are fooling themselves he's just paying lip service, he's reasonable really when he just isn't.

Isn't that worst case scenario and the reality will be somewhat in between

if males are in womens sports then there is no ‘womens sports’

Surely you cannot vote Tory because of this one point?! Look at the whole package, they are destroying the NHS.

As damaging as it may be in other respects, I'm prepared to make this the single issue over which I decide my vote. Labour have only to do one thing, make a manifesto pledge that makes it clear and unambiguous that they know what a woman is and will protect women and girls. If they do my vote will probably go their way.

All of this has happened under the Tories.

Where's the trans guidance for schools? Still not released. It was promised last September.

Words are easy....actions, not so much.

RoyGBivisacolorfulman · Today 09:03
I just can't get over the mindset that this one issue to the detriment of everything else mental health, schools, nhs and all of the sleeze that you would still vote them on this one issue.

The dangers of gender self-identity are becoming clear with the likes of Isla Bryson and Lia Thomas but Labour and Kier Starmer are still wedded to that policy. They still refuse to prioritise biological sex over gender identity. And yet you trust them with mental health, schools and the NHS? What evidence do you have that they’ll be better? None! We can only hope they’ll be better but their time in opposition doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m also not convinced they are less sleazy. I just think the Conservatives are more blatant with the sleaze.

I can understand people wanting a change from the Conservatives. What I struggle with is the short memories and rewriting history going on on this thread. There was a time many politicians and policymakers couldn’t envisage the harms of trans ideology because they seemed to be hypothetical or minor. Many women weren’t convinced and some still aren’t. Stonewall were the good guys who knew best and they were in favour. No-one wanted to stick their head above the parapet. There was, in fact, a climate of fear, and few people wanted to get involved.

Many posters are still very careful what they say in their private lives and workplaces but politicians are expected to have thrown their careers away five years ago by going against the tide at a time when many people were still just learning of the dangers of gender self-identity. I think many of you are hypocrites for whom (anonymous) talk on the internet is cheap.

Yes like the free school meals people a lotb of people lives are at risk by voting tory.

I'm more likely to vote Tory at this stage.

I wouldn't even consider voting labour whilst Starmer is leader.

they are destroying the NHS.

What will labour do to fix it?? Because if self ID is law, even with current GRA it’s a problem with respect to data collection and allocating services for women based on corrupted data, and of course same sex care and privacy. I think labour would make the NHS worse, much worse

So if labour decided they were going to roll back gay marriage for example would it be ok for someone not to vote for them on that basis?

or someone refusing to vote labour because of the anti semitism

(and i know they would never roll back gay rights ….. its just an example)

Yes like the free school meals people a lotb of people lives are at risk by voting tory.

I didn’t know they planned to remove this. I however would say to this, as I’m from a country that doesn’t have school meals, that this kind of thing is a subsidy for employers. People should get paid enough or have enough in benefit support to pay for all their needs. Identifying people at school as not having enough for lunch to me, is a problem.

Last week someone (home owning white working class with four adult children) was claiming that amongst non graduate young people being Conservative was seen as aspirational. You get your job, pay your taxes and get on with life. Labour does not represent you.

I am certainly seeing something similar when canvassing. An extraordinary percentage of people born overseas (ie with accents, in an area which is predominantly white British) say they will vote Conservative. Again people who are working hard to build a life here.

At some point Labour seem to have lost their connection with working people. On gender, on boats, whatever. Too much Islington/Guardian/Student Union bubble? The Tories will be far from perfect, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether a Conservative government will be better for you than a Starmer led Labour one. Last time the choice was Boris/Johnson and Boris won. Starmer is less polarising but he still needs to convince his natural constituency.

think many of you are hypocrites for whom (anonymous) talk on the internet is cheap.

In what way is it hypocritical?

Actually maybe they woukd roll back gay rights 🤔 certainly some people believe this will happen

So if labour decided they were going to roll back gay marriage for example would it be ok for someone not to vote for them on that basis?

Yes. People are allowed to prioritise their basic rights absolutely

EDI is destroying the NHS - Labour love that shit.

The NHS’s current problems are partly Blair’s chickens coming home to roost.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2006/feb/16/health.politics

I totally agree with you. Very good post. My hope is that with Rishi at least we have some kind of status quo that other nations respect. I don’t like keir starmer. He’s wishy washy, lacks conviction. I don’t think he will be good for the country either. I definitely don’t want more of the same. But I don’t see what alternative there is.

Whaeanui

you’d think so wouldn’t you

I am afraid I just can't with this. These are agitprop soundbites.

Our local hospital needed renovating. That renovation and expansion was done under Blair through a PFI deal. The cost of the renovation was £70 million. By the time we have finished paying for it, it will have cost us £350 million. This is why our local health service is nearly on its knees.

The PFI deal is currently held with a corporate entity registered in the Cayman islands. We ordinary people are paying huge sums of money to a shadowy entity, which does not pay tax, for the privilege of having a renovated hospital.

Blair did this. And because no one associates Labour with financially screwing the populace, no-one fucking shouted about any of it because "Labour = good." Had the Conservatives done this, it would have been splashed, and repeatedly splashed, across every bloody newspaper, the BBC would still be talking about it, and Billy fucking Bragg would have written song after song about it.

I am sick of bloody political tribalism. It blinds people, and the bastards get away with murder. This incarnation of Labour have been letting fanatics run riot over policy and reality. Blair and Brown's incarnation of Labour ran policies based on an economy inflated by cheap credit and selling capital, so that when the credit spigot stopped, £200 billion was wiped out of tax receipts and we've been shackled to huge PDI commitments = that's the cause of the bloody deficit and austerity we've seen for the last decade.

At what point do you say: this is not the party I assumed it was. At what point?

At some point Labour seem to have lost their connection with working people.

This!!!! My family are labour voters going way back, one of my grandparents was British. I’m very working class. While I do think support is important, for low income workers, single parents etc I also find those around me are still aspirational, they don’t want to think of themselves as always going to need hand outs or help from ‘the rich’. To put it simplistically.

Giraffe some of those examples aren’t under our Tory gov - woman in hospital was Scotland - SNP jurisdiction; woman with broken eye socket was in NZ, which is further down the GI road than we are in the UK. Look at what’s happening in Canada. Never saying the tories have been good, but on this issue, they have been demonstrably better than labour goes elsewhere. Sunak’ s position on this is acceptable to me, I believe he will try to make things better. Starmer’s is not.

I just posted an article from 2006 that foreshadows everything you describe here.

People have short memories it seems.

I’m with Hag. The Labour Party has a new agenda, a quasi religious belief which amalgamates queer theory, gender identity, critical race theory. This new agenda will suffuse everything they do, it has replaced socialism. They cannot create a fairer more functional society using this new quasi religious belief. In my opinion this particular new agenda will create more divisions in society, limit freedoms of the majority while privileging a minority, and be disastrous for women and children, for vulnerable adults of both sexes, for adherents of other religions, for men who value freedom of speech and safeguarding of their children.

Labour believe that men are who they say they are. A country, a society cannot be run effectively without acknowledgment that there is material, objective, observable reality in regard to the physical world which includes us human beings.

We need to be able to make judgments about who people are and what risks they might pose to ourselves, our families and society at large. We cannot take anyone’s word about it we need objective evidence. We must be allowed to trust in the evidence of our own senses and not forced to deny it in speech or action. Governments must be able to collect and disseminate accurate data and in some circumstances to require factual identity documentation.

If Labour was genuinely about publicly funded public services for example I’d be interested but Labour is not about that it is about this new belief system, the belief that an individual creates his or her own identity out of “gender”, skin tone, and intimacy preferences and then that identity must be validated and celebrated by all of us as individuals, by the state and state institutions, by charities and by private businesses backed up by authoritarian means.