Not content with losing the North, Labour are now about to lose everyone who isn’t insane. No-one will vote for a party frightened of defining the word ‘woman’. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson kicks the ball into the open goal.
Yeah I was just having that thought. He actually sounds so truthful, sincere and reasonable. I can't square this with partygate and other more serious crap things he has done...
Johnson, like all politicians, including those far more talented than him, is an opportunist. Presumably, by now he and his advisers can see the way the wind is blowing, or is going to be blowing. The whole biogical men making a declaration and being permitted to compete alongside women thing, is massive. It's getting attention from people that other stuff didn't, though it was far more shocking, in fact. As a result, changes are beginning to happen, even at the Guardian.
It's a bit unfair in this case. Boris Johnson talks unusually eloquently and Sajid Javid has also been very helpful. For once, he didn't just make the right noises.
I still don't believe he is genuine... So much else has gone wrong for him, he will pick up and run with anything that makes him look good. The Wallis announcement meant he had to say all the things that all politicians say, "the man is so brave, erc", whereas what he shouldn't have said anytbing in the House and should have disciplined the MP for grandstanding on what should have been a private matter between Wallis snd the leader of the party. Blojo will say whatever it takes to win votes abd this country cannot take another Tory government without going bankrupt!
If you meet a politician who has a genuine sense of ethics, they won't be in politics much longer! Thinking here of the decent Democrats ousted by the Democratic Party in the U.S. Cynthia McKinney is fantastic on America's War Machine, a brilliant woman.
At Council level, there are several politicians with morals and ethical practice. And thee are still some in the Scottish Parliament who gave been around for years. People tend to vote for people who have stood up for them and their area rather than parties in many cases. And some MSPs have held their seats for the 22 years of the Scottish Parliament because they do what it says on the tin.
This is good to know, but I find that even local politicians in the U.S. are now ventriloquist dummies for their parties, their indistinguishable parties.
It's hard to stomach that the only party speaking up for sex based rights is the Conservative party. Too late for Starmer, Davey, Sturgeon etc to row back now, how could we ever trust the people who sold women's rights down the river, ignored serious safeguarding issues, told kids sterilisation, mutilation and brittle bones were a way to be your true self and betrayed the LGB community. I will never vote for any of these genderwanksters again.
Voted Labour all my adult life but I don't see myself ever, ever doing that again. I feel utterly betrayed and disgusted by them. This open goal that Suzanne Moore referred to - and warned them about - points to the sheer stupidity and lack of integrity of so many of them now in the Labour party, at least the ones we hear from these days. That they have become so unstuck on this matter would be simply ridiculous and absurd if it wasn't so frightening in its consequences. Women's rights and protections, and children's safety and well being, are absolutely fundamental to me and I will vote for the party that is not afraid to say that.
Labour deserve to disappear in my view. David 'Dinosaurs' Lammy, Yvette 'Rabbit Hole' Cooper, Anneliese 'Depends on the Context' Dodds, Keir 'Cervixes Shouldn't be Said' Starmer, F-off the whole fecking lot of you. You have completed the destruction of the Labour Party, pandering to Twitter cranks and nutjobs, beardsplaining misogynists, predators, narcissists, fools, Lottery-funded charity grifters, charlatans, and the hard-of-thinking hashtag activists. Shame on you and shame on your idiocy and cowardice.
As Diana Johnstone wrote, there is no socialism in Europe's socialist parties and no representation of labour in Europe's labour parties. They were bought, and bought cheap.
In my opinion, this is not the time to be sentimental about one’s vote. Why be loyal to Labour, who has so completely and utterly betrayed women, children and gays/lesbians? The Labour you are talking died so many years ago, that ship has sailed. Only the name remains.
You are still living in your dream of what the Labour Party and all the left used to be. These people are not the Left our parents or grand-parents used to support. These people are impersonators! They are throwing women under the bus and they call themselves Labour, but it is just a meaningless name tag. Just like the Greens who are now in reality biology deniers and fanatically anti -women. They are not defending ecology nor science, same thing with Labour, they are now deeply invested in destroying women’s rights, not defending the working class.
And these dreams are part of the problem. They keep people from forming new parties which actually represent people instead of the obscenely wealthy and corporations. But starting a new political party requires A LOT OF WORK; a lot of us older people are tired, too many people have to work long hours to keep their families above water, and so many young people seem to be utterly detached from reality.
Congratulations Labour; the hill you chose to die on is an incredibly dumb yet violently-aggressive cultish movement favoured by misogynists and paedophiles, which preys on vulnerable kids, tries to roll back women's rights and most voters think it's garbage.
Ballot box gold. Prepare yourselves for a '97-style landslide with that genius strategy.
Ed Milliband has just bla bla'd on on Sky about teenage children and how it's rude to talk about genitals. My guess is he has one of these teenage children and no parental authority
Yes, he did, and Starmer, if he doesn't want to end up with another Labour defeat, will have to do likewise. That's going to be quite different though, seeing that he's allowed himself and senior shadow cabinet ministers to become so enmeshed in gender identity ideology.
Almost every day I find myself shaking my head in disbelief that it came to this. If this can happen here, then any authoritarian ideology can make people say ridiculous things; lie; gaslight; make people afraid to speak truth.
Absolutely correct. And harking back to the post a few days ago on what question to ask Labour canvassers on your doorstep: "Have you publicly supported Rosie Duffield and condemned the threats made against her, or have you remained silent while she has been viciously mobbed and smeared by activists?" That'll do for me.
It does make me larf that the question "What is a woman?" is the defining issue for the UK's political landscape. Even just 3 years ago this was not confusing for anyone except a few deluded soulls lurking on the internet, now only one political party leader can apparently look it up in a dictionary and point one out in a crowd. Jeez. I suspect the other parties are pandering to a loud minority who they think will be vote winners but I'm pretty certain that once again the silent majority will be out in force.
They will eventually. As far as I’m concerned the erosion of women’s rights and women in general by trans activists is the single defining issue of the moment.
Sickens me that the party that claims to be for the people and the working class refuse to accept women need sex based protections and kids should not be encouraged into transition
Time for a new party, I think. Labour is finished. It's essential that there's a strong opposition to whomever is currently in power, and Labour aint it, hasn't been for a long time and certainly isn't anymore.
I am past caring what other people think about me. I think the country is possibly going to be past this - so many hyperbolic accusations of fascism, homophobia, transphobia, racism have made people weary
Agree, very hyperbolic! Including the overuse of the word "vile". I've come to the conclusion that the person shouting the word "bigot" is actually the real bigot.
And it's not as if they weren't warned, left wing feminists have been saying this would happen for ages. They walked right into it and, much as I hate what the Tories are doing to the country, I hope the other parties get bloody noses over this in the May elections. That way they might see the light before GE 2024 and give us someone to vote for.
Cervixgate should have warned them to get their act together. They’ve had time to think this through but instead they’ve been huffing their own farts of righteousness.
So true. Women within their own party have been trying to talk to them for years. Love the 'righteous farts' metaphor. Below - dossier prepared by Labour Women's Declaration for the Chair of the LP.
This is gold! From now on I'm referring to the spontaneous-generation-of-ladybits moment as "Cervixgate", and these fawning trans-bootlickers as "huffers"!
However I don't think the issue will rate as highly in people's minds as higher taxes, rising fuel costs etc. Unfortunately in my opinion as you are right, this is far more a fundamental issue.
Vote for who you want to! But it’s just not accurate to call the Tories “human hating”. You know who goes in for that sort of argument? TRAs, who say that standing up for women’s rights is an attempt to remove trans people’s right to exist.
Oh, I won’t be voting Labour either due to their misogyny. I do not consider Tories as individuals to be human-hating and indeed many are decent, I am sure; I consider the tacitly murderous Covid POLICIES — alongside a decade of austerity and the gutting of the NHS and refugee restrictions — of Boris and his closest cronies to be human-hating, including the current premature opening-up whilst cases soar. Over 200,000 dead, and many needlessly.
Thank God BJ has actually thought this through ,unlike some of his fellow conservatives. Do they not yet realise that a ban on conversion therapy for " trans identifying " children has the potential to cause far more harm than good ,by not allowing professional therapists to explore and investigate why the child feels the way they do and decide the best course of action for that child ? Considering that official figures show that 80% of such children desist in the end and many of them turn out to be gay ,surely exploratory therapy is much better and ,more importantly safer than instant affirmation? All that talk about exorcisms and other gruesome sounding " conversion therapies" is surely a smoke screen ,as nobody's yet furnished any proof that these have been done to children or even " trans identifying " adults ?
Yeah ,I'd never heard of it at all until this gender ideology nonsense started ,so didn't know what some gay people had been put through .So sad.but of course the tras have hijacked this in the same way they've hijacked the lived experiences of every other group of people , especially women !!
To make sure the real conversion therapy (transing children) becomes the norm. Heard of “affirmation therapy”? Brainwashing children to make them think they are “born in the wrong body”?
It's also my impression that "gay conversion therapy" has largely been a U.S. phenomenon, because the secular version pretty much died off decades ago (when same-sex attraction officially ceased to be defined as a mental illness), and what remained-- the so-called "ex-gay ministries"-- was mainly the province of evangelical Christians. Which are, from what I understand, pretty thin on the ground in the UK. (Cuz you guys had the good sense to ship all those religious loonies over here!)
I don't disagree with that. But it doesn't appear to happen much in the UK, and coercive / abusive practices are already banned under existing legislation.
I confess I know nothing about it myself. Googled this morning and found this
Have you got any evidence of this happening in this country? Genuinely. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all. But so that it needs to be legislated against?
Many simply don’t understand. There are comments in The Times today under a couple of trans-related articles by people talking about ‘vile conversion therapy’, clearly having no clue what it means in this context. Reassuringly, most who have commented seem to be GC.
I am worried that I agree with something BJ says. Wholeheartedly.
Yeah I was just having that thought. He actually sounds so truthful, sincere and reasonable. I can't square this with partygate and other more serious crap things he has done...
Johnson, like all politicians, including those far more talented than him, is an opportunist. Presumably, by now he and his advisers can see the way the wind is blowing, or is going to be blowing. The whole biogical men making a declaration and being permitted to compete alongside women thing, is massive. It's getting attention from people that other stuff didn't, though it was far more shocking, in fact. As a result, changes are beginning to happen, even at the Guardian.
Well, if acknowledging the biological reality is opportunistic, give me opportunism any day.
I'm very glad he's done it, but this isn't a rehabilitated Johnson, unfortunately.
Well, no, of course. He's so wrong everywhere else but today, I felt a real sense of relief.
I know what you mean, don't let my cynicism spoil anything. I'm relieved too xx
Carrie is a fully paid-up Stonewall advocate. You're right, this is electioneering.
Good to know he sometimes goes against his wife's advice
I don't think he's spoken so clearly before.
Stopped clocks and all that
It's a bit unfair in this case. Boris Johnson talks unusually eloquently and Sajid Javid has also been very helpful. For once, he didn't just make the right noises.
If they stay with this, they will get the votes.
Funny how we both hit on that!
I know... depressing as I loathe him on a visceral level for multiple reasons.
Me too. Despise him.
I don't think you can change your politics that far... Unless you have always sat on the fence!
Me too
Aa loathe him wae a passion. This latest although much welcomed is tarnished by his sheer opportunism. *Swearie wurds*
I still don't believe he is genuine... So much else has gone wrong for him, he will pick up and run with anything that makes him look good. The Wallis announcement meant he had to say all the things that all politicians say, "the man is so brave, erc", whereas what he shouldn't have said anytbing in the House and should have disciplined the MP for grandstanding on what should have been a private matter between Wallis snd the leader of the party. Blojo will say whatever it takes to win votes abd this country cannot take another Tory government without going bankrupt!
If you meet a politician who has a genuine sense of ethics, they won't be in politics much longer! Thinking here of the decent Democrats ousted by the Democratic Party in the U.S. Cynthia McKinney is fantastic on America's War Machine, a brilliant woman.
At Council level, there are several politicians with morals and ethical practice. And thee are still some in the Scottish Parliament who gave been around for years. People tend to vote for people who have stood up for them and their area rather than parties in many cases. And some MSPs have held their seats for the 22 years of the Scottish Parliament because they do what it says on the tin.
This is good to know, but I find that even local politicians in the U.S. are now ventriloquist dummies for their parties, their indistinguishable parties.
It's hard to stomach that the only party speaking up for sex based rights is the Conservative party. Too late for Starmer, Davey, Sturgeon etc to row back now, how could we ever trust the people who sold women's rights down the river, ignored serious safeguarding issues, told kids sterilisation, mutilation and brittle bones were a way to be your true self and betrayed the LGB community. I will never vote for any of these genderwanksters again.
well said
Aye, aa couldnae agree mair. 👏👏👏
Genderwanksters is worth saving in one's lexicon!
Voted Labour all my adult life but I don't see myself ever, ever doing that again. I feel utterly betrayed and disgusted by them. This open goal that Suzanne Moore referred to - and warned them about - points to the sheer stupidity and lack of integrity of so many of them now in the Labour party, at least the ones we hear from these days. That they have become so unstuck on this matter would be simply ridiculous and absurd if it wasn't so frightening in its consequences. Women's rights and protections, and children's safety and well being, are absolutely fundamental to me and I will vote for the party that is not afraid to say that.
Labour deserve to disappear in my view. David 'Dinosaurs' Lammy, Yvette 'Rabbit Hole' Cooper, Anneliese 'Depends on the Context' Dodds, Keir 'Cervixes Shouldn't be Said' Starmer, F-off the whole fecking lot of you. You have completed the destruction of the Labour Party, pandering to Twitter cranks and nutjobs, beardsplaining misogynists, predators, narcissists, fools, Lottery-funded charity grifters, charlatans, and the hard-of-thinking hashtag activists. Shame on you and shame on your idiocy and cowardice.
this comment should be in a newspaper
Yep. Totally agree with everything you have said here.
You forgot Dawn 'yes, we have no cervixes' Butler
As Diana Johnstone wrote, there is no socialism in Europe's socialist parties and no representation of labour in Europe's labour parties. They were bought, and bought cheap.
In my opinion, this is not the time to be sentimental about one’s vote. Why be loyal to Labour, who has so completely and utterly betrayed women, children and gays/lesbians? The Labour you are talking died so many years ago, that ship has sailed. Only the name remains.
You are still living in your dream of what the Labour Party and all the left used to be. These people are not the Left our parents or grand-parents used to support. These people are impersonators! They are throwing women under the bus and they call themselves Labour, but it is just a meaningless name tag. Just like the Greens who are now in reality biology deniers and fanatically anti -women. They are not defending ecology nor science, same thing with Labour, they are now deeply invested in destroying women’s rights, not defending the working class.
And these dreams are part of the problem. They keep people from forming new parties which actually represent people instead of the obscenely wealthy and corporations. But starting a new political party requires A LOT OF WORK; a lot of us older people are tired, too many people have to work long hours to keep their families above water, and so many young people seem to be utterly detached from reality.
This is really huge! Every leader has been using weasel words, but BJ did not. This will turn the tide in a big way!
Hope you're right.
Congratulations Labour; the hill you chose to die on is an incredibly dumb yet violently-aggressive cultish movement favoured by misogynists and paedophiles, which preys on vulnerable kids, tries to roll back women's rights and most voters think it's garbage.
Ballot box gold. Prepare yourselves for a '97-style landslide with that genius strategy.
Ed Milliband has just bla bla'd on on Sky about teenage children and how it's rude to talk about genitals. My guess is he has one of these teenage children and no parental authority
brilliant
[chef's kiss]
Even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day,Johnson says what Starmer could easily say.
Please Labour,get a grip.You can support women and trans people by accepting the reality of biological sex.
Yes, he did, and Starmer, if he doesn't want to end up with another Labour defeat, will have to do likewise. That's going to be quite different though, seeing that he's allowed himself and senior shadow cabinet ministers to become so enmeshed in gender identity ideology.
He did nothing to support Rosie Duffield and his women hating members harass Labour for Women meetings. Screw him.
Indeed. He threw so many Labour women and all women under the bus.
Almost every day I find myself shaking my head in disbelief that it came to this. If this can happen here, then any authoritarian ideology can make people say ridiculous things; lie; gaslight; make people afraid to speak truth.
Absolutely correct. And harking back to the post a few days ago on what question to ask Labour canvassers on your doorstep: "Have you publicly supported Rosie Duffield and condemned the threats made against her, or have you remained silent while she has been viciously mobbed and smeared by activists?" That'll do for me.
Labour, Greens, Lib dems have all sold women down the river + all the independence parties.
Fuckhing hell I agree with him
I’m no boris fan , he’s a twat , but he’s right on this bit
It does make me larf that the question "What is a woman?" is the defining issue for the UK's political landscape. Even just 3 years ago this was not confusing for anyone except a few deluded soulls lurking on the internet, now only one political party leader can apparently look it up in a dictionary and point one out in a crowd. Jeez. I suspect the other parties are pandering to a loud minority who they think will be vote winners but I'm pretty certain that once again the silent majority will be out in force.
No other party in the UK is even capable of saying what a woman is (and isn’t).
I decided some time ago I wouldn’t vote for any party taking part in this gender jiggery wokery. Looks as if the Tories will get my vote.
Even though Boris Johnson is an awful man. Gritted teeth, etc. If only they would ditch him for a more serious person as leader.
They will eventually. As far as I’m concerned the erosion of women’s rights and women in general by trans activists is the single defining issue of the moment.
Yes, because if our laws are changed further, there will be no changing them back. We will be the shitshow of misogyny that is Canada or California
Really really really really despise that the tories are our only ally. I hate it. It perpetuates this idea that we're all uber right wing bigots.
It's so hard for us lefties, love what the Tories are doing here, hate that Labour aren't doing just that.
Sickens me that the party that claims to be for the people and the working class refuse to accept women need sex based protections and kids should not be encouraged into transition
Time for a new party, I think. Labour is finished. It's essential that there's a strong opposition to whomever is currently in power, and Labour aint it, hasn't been for a long time and certainly isn't anymore.
I am past caring what other people think about me. I think the country is possibly going to be past this - so many hyperbolic accusations of fascism, homophobia, transphobia, racism have made people weary
Agree, very hyperbolic! Including the overuse of the word "vile". I've come to the conclusion that the person shouting the word "bigot" is actually the real bigot.
We need to grow up about this, quite frankly, and give back as good as we get.
there is no right and left anymore, just up and down
or right and wrong
Political plurality is good.
Grinding my teeth here...
And those of us who are leftish, prepare for more attacks on us as being in league with the feckin Tories.
there is no left and right anymore, only right and wrong
The left historically believed in understanding material reality & analysis of class structures. These things still need to be understood.
Not woo & consumerism.
And it's not as if they weren't warned, left wing feminists have been saying this would happen for ages. They walked right into it and, much as I hate what the Tories are doing to the country, I hope the other parties get bloody noses over this in the May elections. That way they might see the light before GE 2024 and give us someone to vote for.
Cervixgate should have warned them to get their act together. They’ve had time to think this through but instead they’ve been huffing their own farts of righteousness.
So true. Women within their own party have been trying to talk to them for years. Love the 'righteous farts' metaphor. Below - dossier prepared by Labour Women's Declaration for the Chair of the LP.
https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/LWD-Silencing-of-Women-in-the-Labour-Party-1.pdf
This is gold! From now on I'm referring to the spontaneous-generation-of-ladybits moment as "Cervixgate", and these fawning trans-bootlickers as "huffers"!
However I don't think the issue will rate as highly in people's minds as higher taxes, rising fuel costs etc. Unfortunately in my opinion as you are right, this is far more a fundamental issue.
Fuck it man, he’s got my vote cause of this. Not a Tory but I’ve had enough of this shit
Hard disagree. I will not vote Labour but I will not vote Tory. Their policies are also woman-hating and more generally human-hating.
Vote for who you want to! But it’s just not accurate to call the Tories “human hating”. You know who goes in for that sort of argument? TRAs, who say that standing up for women’s rights is an attempt to remove trans people’s right to exist.
Oh, I won’t be voting Labour either due to their misogyny. I do not consider Tories as individuals to be human-hating and indeed many are decent, I am sure; I consider the tacitly murderous Covid POLICIES — alongside a decade of austerity and the gutting of the NHS and refugee restrictions — of Boris and his closest cronies to be human-hating, including the current premature opening-up whilst cases soar. Over 200,000 dead, and many needlessly.
Thank God BJ has actually thought this through ,unlike some of his fellow conservatives. Do they not yet realise that a ban on conversion therapy for " trans identifying " children has the potential to cause far more harm than good ,by not allowing professional therapists to explore and investigate why the child feels the way they do and decide the best course of action for that child ? Considering that official figures show that 80% of such children desist in the end and many of them turn out to be gay ,surely exploratory therapy is much better and ,more importantly safer than instant affirmation? All that talk about exorcisms and other gruesome sounding " conversion therapies" is surely a smoke screen ,as nobody's yet furnished any proof that these have been done to children or even " trans identifying " adults ?
Or more than a bare handful of gay people, in fact. I think there is one case that has been cited in the media.
Yeah ,I'd never heard of it at all until this gender ideology nonsense started ,so didn't know what some gay people had been put through .So sad.but of course the tras have hijacked this in the same way they've hijacked the lived experiences of every other group of people , especially women !!
I think it has happened more in the US (attempts at "gay conversion", I mean). But not remotely common in the UK. Why does it need legislation at all?
To make sure the real conversion therapy (transing children) becomes the norm. Heard of “affirmation therapy”? Brainwashing children to make them think they are “born in the wrong body”?
It's also my impression that "gay conversion therapy" has largely been a U.S. phenomenon, because the secular version pretty much died off decades ago (when same-sex attraction officially ceased to be defined as a mental illness), and what remained-- the so-called "ex-gay ministries"-- was mainly the province of evangelical Christians. Which are, from what I understand, pretty thin on the ground in the UK. (Cuz you guys had the good sense to ship all those religious loonies over here!)
Seriously?! Because it’s a disgusting homophobic practice.
I don't disagree with that. But it doesn't appear to happen much in the UK, and coercive / abusive practices are already banned under existing legislation.
I confess I know nothing about it myself. Googled this morning and found this
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/is-there-evidence-of-an-urgent-epidemic-of-conversion-therapy/
This is untrue. Particularly Christian and Muslim therapists frequently engage in anti-LGB conversion therapy.
Have you got any evidence of this happening in this country? Genuinely. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all. But so that it needs to be legislated against?
Many simply don’t understand. There are comments in The Times today under a couple of trans-related articles by people talking about ‘vile conversion therapy’, clearly having no clue what it means in this context. Reassuringly, most who have commented seem to be GC.