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Starmer Next Labour Leader

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1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

 

I disagree, hence my quotes about "danger" above. I think that the issues are very similar considering the language being used to describe them.

 

I think you are confusing Twitter with the real world.  Like the Labour leadership candidates.

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Last night's Moral Maze on Radio 4 discussed the issue of trans rights. One of the guests was Torr Robinson, who is one of the founders of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, the body behind the recent pledge card that Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey both signed up to. Torr's main argument was basically the same as leiscmac's - that no measures to prevent men from entering women's spaces is required because 'there are measures to deal with that' - ie, don't prevent women from being assaulted - just wait for it to happen and then take action. I thought Torr was pretty awful - inarticulate, confused and evasive. Michael Portillo was the voice of sanity and reason, which I admit is a sentence I never thought I would write.

 

Anyway, for anybody who is interested: Moral Maze

 

Edited by ClaphamFox
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On 18/02/2020 at 09:06, MattP said:

Dawn Butler goes all in by now declaring we are born without a biological sex, which will surprise midwives and parents all over the nation.

 

No better than flat earthers some of this lot.

Oh...

 

Needn't have bothered getting dresses and painting the nursery pink for Eliza then. 

 

 

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On 20/02/2020 at 08:39, ClaphamFox said:

Last night's Moral Maze on Radio 4 discussed the issue of trans rights. One of the guests was Torr Robinson, who is one of the founders of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, the body behind the recent pledge card that Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey both signed up to. Torr's main argument was basically the same as leiscmac's - that no measures to prevent men from entering women's spaces is required because 'there are measures to deal with that' - ie, don't prevent women from being assaulted - just wait for it to happen and then take action. I thought Torr was pretty awful - inarticulate, confused and evasive. Michael Portillo was the voice of sanity and reason, which I admit is a sentence I never thought I would write.

 

Anyway, for anybody who is interested: Moral Maze

 

I think people are very deliberately taking the really quite sensible view that women have a right to private facilities to mean we think trans woman are all rapsits.  Utter utter nonsense.  The very presence of someone who many still consider to be a man in a private space reserved for women will be disturbing for many women.  You would be excluding a much larger number of women from feeling safe than the number of trans women you are making feel included;  Not a good plan.

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On 19/02/2020 at 13:16, leicsmac said:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8

 

That goes into a lot of detail about how this is a complex matter and far removed from the reductive terms that people often use. Of course, other journals might be found that say things are simpler than that, but my argument was simply to prove that there is no scientific consensus on gender essentialism as was implied above.

 

And purely for the sake of clarity at this point, this conversation isn't just about being assigned sex at birth - if it were then the discussion about the Dawn Butler clip would just be that she's daft and that's it. What the poster above said (and has been echoed in implication by others) is that as well as sex being assigned at birth, there is no possibility of changing it and you fit into a box called "male" or "female" for the rest of your life (with a few exceptions). Essentialism, in a nutshell.

 

That article alone proves that biologists believe the issue is much more complicated than that and to use chromosomes alone (everything else can be changed and even chromosomes themselves are not infallible) in order to judge a persons sex and use that as something immutable is incorrect and those who use it are either ignorant or looking for an excuse to ostracise and further marginalise an already marginalised community who by and large simply want to life their lives safely and with a modicum of peace. 

 

NB. It's also a bit frustrating when there is overlap between the people who imply scientific consensus on this matter where there is none and then turn around and deny scientific consensus on other matters where there is one (like climate change). Science doesn't just work when it suits one.

 

 

I disagree, hence my quotes about "danger" above. I think that the issues are very similar considering the language being used to describe them.

 

 

No, because that would imply that I think there is some kind of oppressor-oppressed duality between trans folks and women/girls and as such rights are a zero-sum game and to give one more is to take away from the other. I absolutely reject that as a prejudiced generalisation and declaring someone potentially guilty without the possibility of proving themselves innocent, and as such my position is reasonably simple: it is possible to protect the rights of women and girls and protect the rights of trans folks to be able to use a space where they may feel safer at the same time. You know, treat them as not criminals or even potential criminals as a demographic until they actually commit a crime.

 

I also reject this essentialist idea that a trans woman is in fact a man in every case, as you imply here.

 

Do you really think that some kind of "bathroom police" law banning trans folks from using the bathroom that they identify as will really reduce the number of assaults and rapes on women and girls? If a man wants to do such a terrible thing, he's likely going to do it anyway - perhaps your problem should be with those men, rather than the vast majority of trans women who have never committed a crime in their lives. Of course, you seem very eager to conflate the two.

 

WRT the political consequences, neither of use are really going to know how such a thing would eventuate so I don't see the certainty about it. But, as I said above, things change over time, just like they did with gay people and ethnic monorities - no word on the similarities I pointed out there, it seems.

 

To be honest thought, at this point I do think this is veering off topic in this particular thread and I also get the idea that further discussion is pointless as we may well end up just talking past each other so I'll let this be my last comment on the topic for the time being. I'll leave it with the hope that one day science will advance to the point that changing ones identity will be much much easier than it is even now, and then humanity might just learn how little meaning such identities truly have when each of us is a different person and all of us are human.

it's pretty naiive to assume that human beings and science in general have only just, in the last handful of years, truly understood human gender and identity and everything that came before was wrong. the insufferable smothering of opinion of radical leftist idealogues will only prevail for so long and I suspect that infinite identities and pronouns will be swept away on the winds of time in much the same way that flairs and robin reliants were.

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1) I find it quite interesting that arguments regarding sexual assault and rape, that are usually dismissed and laughed off by certain posters when regarding straight men, are being retooled by the same posters with an anti-trans sentiment. 
 

2) That being said, this entire issue is extremely ill-timed. It’s already seems to have leap-frogged the anti-semitism issue for a couple candidates, which is extremely concerning (but also not surprising for one candidate in particular). Nandy may be emboldened by winning the Jewish vote but identity politics need to take a back role for now, they can be concerned over once the Labour Party has some influence. I’m glad Starmer has side-stepped it at least.

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15 hours ago, MattP said:

Richard Burgon is officially no longer than maddest person in the deputy leader race.

 

 

Thankfully not a chance of winning. 

 

I get the sense that the Corbynista surge has been dying in the party for about two years and the final nail in the coffin was the election. 

 

Lots of them have left the party - the membership went down to around 450k at one point- and the membership surge since the election has reportedly been built on members who left after the 2015 leadership election.

 

The result, I hope, is a much more sensible and moderate membership who understands that you need to be in power to change things and that Barry from Barnsley doesn't give a shit about Palestine or neoliberalism. He just wants schools, hospitals and public services that function as well as a competent government who won't **** up the economy and cause a recession. 

 

I do see Labour shifting to the centre-left, which means that the Corbots who remain are likely to try to make a mess from within. Hopefully though, the shift in membership means that they'll be back to the fringes. 

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20 hours ago, Bilo said:

Thankfully not a chance of winning. 

 

I get the sense that the Corbynista surge has been dying in the party for about two years and the final nail in the coffin was the election. 

 

Lots of them have left the party - the membership went down to around 450k at one point- and the membership surge since the election has reportedly been built on members who left after the 2015 leadership election.

 

The result, I hope, is a much more sensible and moderate membership who understands that you need to be in power to change things and that Barry from Barnsley doesn't give a shit about Palestine or neoliberalism. He just wants schools, hospitals and public services that function as well as a competent government who won't **** up the economy and cause a recession. 

 

I do see Labour shifting to the centre-left, which means that the Corbots who remain are likely to try to make a mess from within. Hopefully though, the shift in membership means that they'll be back to the fringes. 

I hope you are right but it's going to be a hell of a job getting rid of this, after the last election there are probably more Corbynistas in the PLP than moderates now. Keeping them sidelined and silent will be tough.

 

If the membership is looking like an overwhelmingly big win for Starmer they probably should have had a second go at ditching JC after the Euro elections last year. Might have got rid.

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1 hour ago, MattP said:

I hope you are right but it's going to be a hell of a job getting rid of this, after the last election there are probably more Corbynistas in the PLP than moderates now. Keeping them sidelined and silent will be tough.

 

If the membership is looking like an overwhelmingly big win for Starmer they probably should have had a second go at ditching JC after the Euro elections last year. Might have got rid.

 

Corbynistas are still a small minority among Labour MPs. There might be a few more than in 2015, but about 85-90% would still be non-Corbynistas.

 

Remember that Corbyn only just scraped the minimum of 35 nominations to stand in 2015 - and only did so with the (idiotic) support of non-Hard Left MPs like Beckett helping to put him on the ballot paper.

There were probably 20-odd Hard Left MPs in 2015, a few of whom have since retired or lost their seats (Skinner, Campbell, Pidcock etc.). 

 

Their numbers have been bolstered a bit by Corbynistas getting elected where some MPs stood down or defected to Change UK/Lib Dems. But, as I recall, no sitting MPs were successfully deselected (unlike the Tory purge of moderates).

At a guess, I'd put the Corbynistas at about 25 out of 203 Labour MPs.....I'm sure some won't be silent, as Corbyn wasn't silent when he was in that position for decades.....but he was sidelined and every reason to think the Hard Left will be now.

There's a tendency to conflate the Hard Left/Momentum leadership, a few idiots on Twitter and the expanded party membership - as if all those new members will uncritically support the plans of Jon Lansman or the drivel of some nutter on Twitter. Most won't.

 

Would've been nice to have got rid of Corbyn without having to hand the Tories 5 years in power, but it's hindsight to think he could have been dumped after the Euro elections, sadly.

His successful leadership defence against Owen Smith in 2016 & surprisingly narrow election defeat in 2017 gave him credit in the bank that probably made a leadership challenge impossible....without the blatant evidence, for loyal members, of his uselessness at the December general election...

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On 21/02/2020 at 21:53, shade said:

it's pretty naiive to assume that human beings and science in general have only just, in the last handful of years, truly understood human gender and identity and everything that came before was wrong. the insufferable smothering of opinion of radical leftist idealogues will only prevail for so long and I suspect that infinite identities and pronouns will be swept away on the winds of time in much the same way that flairs and robin reliants were.

Sorry, should have got back to this earlier.

 

If you have a moment, have a look at "two-spirit" people in native American history, Hijras in India, "Galli" priests in Greco Roman history and many other examples that prove people outside a gender binary have been acknowledged for a very long time before the present day. If anything, it's the prevalence of Abrahamic organised religion and the strict gender roles it enforced in society that it came to dominate was the radical change from what had come before.

 

What is being thought of now in terms of gender identity is hardly new or radical leftist .

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9 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Sorry, should have got back to this earlier.

 

If you have a moment, have a look at "two-spirit" people in native American history, Hijras in India, "Galli" priests in Greco Roman history and many other examples that prove people outside a gender binary have been acknowledged for a very long time before the present day. If anything, it's the prevalence of Abrahamic organised religion and the strict gender roles it enforced in society that it came to dominate was the radical change from what had come before.

 

What is being thought of now in terms of gender identity is hardly new or radical leftist .

Historic and religious examples are all fine and dandy, these kinds of thoughts and self-identifications are nothing new, sure. But that doesn't make them ordinary or common.

These people still represent a (tiny) minority, and the same goes for them as part of history.

If you look past the religious context, mankind has fared best with a prolonged relationship between a man and a woman - that doesn't mean that other forms aren't allowed to exist, mind.

Otherwise, you, me, most of the people on FT or on this planet wouldn't be here in the first place. It's all about biology, evolution and procreation.

 

"Gender identity" may not be a radical concept, but it's radically pushed to create some kind of a new norm by a certain movement on the left and some of the media.

 

Ok, and now back on topic.

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9 minutes ago, MC Prussian said:

Historic and religious examples are all fine and dandy, these kinds of thoughts and self-identifications are nothing new, sure. But that doesn't make them ordinary or common.

These people still represent a (tiny) minority, and the same goes for them as part of history.

If you look past the religious context, mankind has fared best with a prolonged relationship between a man and a woman - that doesn't mean that other forms aren't allowed to exist, mind.

Otherwise, you, me, most of the people on FT or on this planet wouldn't be here in the first place. It's all about biology, evolution and procreation.

 

"Gender identity" may not be a radical concept, but it's radically pushed to create some kind of a new norm by a certain movement on the left and some of the media.

 

Ok, and now back on topic.

I certainly disagree with the idea that it hasn't been ordinary or common and the implication that if they are such they're unimportant anyway and I was only answering the idea that such ideas were new by proving that are not, but yes, back on topic.

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9 hours ago, MattP said:

I hope you are right but it's going to be a hell of a job getting rid of this, after the last election there are probably more Corbynistas in the PLP than moderates now. Keeping them sidelined and silent will be tough.

 

If the membership is looking like an overwhelmingly big win for Starmer they probably should have had a second go at ditching JC after the Euro elections last year. Might have got rid.

 

7 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

Corbynistas are still a small minority among Labour MPs. There might be a few more than in 2015, but about 85-90% would still be non-Corbynistas.

 

Remember that Corbyn only just scraped the minimum of 35 nominations to stand in 2015 - and only did so with the (idiotic) support of non-Hard Left MPs like Beckett helping to put him on the ballot paper.

There were probably 20-odd Hard Left MPs in 2015, a few of whom have since retired or lost their seats (Skinner, Campbell, Pidcock etc.). 

 

Their numbers have been bolstered a bit by Corbynistas getting elected where some MPs stood down or defected to Change UK/Lib Dems. But, as I recall, no sitting MPs were successfully deselected (unlike the Tory purge of moderates).

At a guess, I'd put the Corbynistas at about 25 out of 203 Labour MPs.....I'm sure some won't be silent, as Corbyn wasn't silent when he was in that position for decades.....but he was sidelined and every reason to think the Hard Left will be now.

There's a tendency to conflate the Hard Left/Momentum leadership, a few idiots on Twitter and the expanded party membership - as if all those new members will uncritically support the plans of Jon Lansman or the drivel of some nutter on Twitter. Most won't.

 

Would've been nice to have got rid of Corbyn without having to hand the Tories 5 years in power, but it's hindsight to think he could have been dumped after the Euro elections, sadly.

His successful leadership defence against Owen Smith in 2016 & surprisingly narrow election defeat in 2017 gave him credit in the bank that probably made a leadership challenge impossible....without the blatant evidence, for loyal members, of his uselessness at the December general election...

What Alf said. 

For all the threats of mandatory reselections from the hard-left, threats surrounding forcing out MPs critical of Saint Jeremy and of turning the party into a hard-left cult forever more, they didn't half make a balls of it. Essentially, the Momentum MPs have replaced outgoing MPs such as those who buggered off to Change UK or have retired, but these have been more than offset by the likes of Skinner and Pidcock losing their seats. The Tory purge of Remainer MPs was more quietly done but infinitely more effective. Are there any Remainer Tories in Parliament now? 

 

Meanwhile, all the powerful positions will go to moderates in the PLP. Abbott is going, Burgon has had such a cluster**** of a campaign that he's rendered himself unemployable from a front bench perspective, McDonnell will get binned by pretty much all of the candidates and you have to question the futures of Karie Murphy and Seumas Milne behind the scenes as well. Even Lansman has been turning against the worst excesses of the hard-left, so they're more or less reduced to impotent Change.org petitions calling for Starmer/Cooper/Benn to resign and heckling anyone they deem a Blairite at the Labour Party Conference.

 

The saddest thing about the whole affair is that there were some good points made by Labour that were lost. The Overton Window, at least economically, has shifted leftward and May's horror show of a campaign in 2017 means that nobody will ever again be stupid enough to stand on a pro-austerity platform, but some of the issues such as a closer relationship with Europe, even stopping short of full-blown EU membership, have been taken out of the hands of good MPs like Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and Stella Creasy and are now associated with the largely inept Corbynista front bench. 

Edited by Bilo
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14 hours ago, Bilo said:

The Tory purge of Remainer MPs was more quietly done but infinitely more effective. Are there any Remainers Tories left?

 

The saddest thing about the whole affair is that there were some good points made by Labour that were lost. The Overton Window, at least economically, has shifted leftward and May's horror show of a campaign in 2017 means that nobody will ever again be stupid enough to stand on a pro-austerity platform, but some of the issues such as a closer relationship with Europe, even stopping short of full-blown EU membership, have been taken out of the hands of good MPs like Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and Stella Creasy and are now associated with the largely inept Corbynista front bench. 

The Tories didn't purge Remainers, they purged MP's who voted to take the business papers out of the hands of the government when the surrender bill/Benn amendment came to parliament. 

 

There are still lots of Tory MP's left who voted Remain but respected that the result had to be implemented.

 

The last point here is now the most crucial one, austerity is over and the Tories are going to feel no guilt about turning on the spending taps.

 

Can Labour shift to the right socially and on cultural issues to counter the Tories going left on economics?

 

The Labour party has gotten a few million tribal votes each year from people who are very socially Conservative, thanks to everything from Brexit to Ash Sarkar many of those now realise a lot of then in the party think they are bigoted gammon - it's going to be a hell of a job to win them back.

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3 hours ago, MattP said:

The Labour party has gotten a few million tribal votes each year from people who are very socially Conservative, thanks to everything from Brexit to Ash Sarkar many of those now realise a lot of then in the party think they are bigoted gammon - it's going to be a hell of a job to win them back.

Before the GE, plenty on the Corbyn hard left bandwagon told more moderate potential Labour voters to "F*** Off and join the Tories" if they didn't worship JC and his views on everything ... and that's exactly what they did.

 

The problem for the likes of Bastani, Sarkar, Jones, Blakely, Mason, NovaraMedia etc is they thought the Corbyn bounce in 2017 was representative of a mood shift in the country towards the harder left when in fact it was almost certainly a protest against Theresa May, knowing Corbyn wouldn't stand any chance of getting into power. When they thought he might in 2019, they massively rejected him and his policies.

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I am not opposed to trans rights. but allowing any one who looks to be male, who self defines as a female to enter a females only changing room is wrong and not because the trans gender person is any more likely to be a rapist that a lesbian is but because those male's  who are up to no good can not be stopped from entering the ladies changing rooms either simply by stating that they themselves are transgender the only solution to this situation  is simply to offer single changing rooms for all sex they do this at my local swimming pool with no issues. I am not sure about this why would a trans female feel more comfortable to get the embarrassing bits they would like surgically removed out in front of a group of women who would think these sexual organs to be strange on another woman than getting changed in a room with people with similar bits? in the history of the world has anyone been bullied for being the same.

As for the next leader please wake up and smell the coffee the number of post that said Labour will get my vote once they offer free pints in Wetherspoons rather than free broadband. 

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Paul Mason clearly thinks Starmer has won it. Astonishing to see him on this side.

 

Shameless to be honest when he has spent the last three years cuddling upto everyone from Corbyn to Novara Media assuming they would keep control of the party.

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13 hours ago, MattP said:

 

The Tories didn't purge Remainers, they purged MP's who voted to take the business papers out of the hands of the government when the surrender bill/Benn amendment came to parliament. 

 

There are still lots of Tory MP's left who voted Remain but respected that the result had to be implemented.

 

The last point here is now the most crucial one, austerity is over and the Tories are going to feel no guilt about turning on the spending taps.

 

Can Labour shift to the right socially and on cultural issues to counter the Tories going left on economics?

 

The Labour party has gotten a few million tribal votes each year from people who are very socially Conservative, thanks to everything from Brexit to Ash Sarkar many of those now realise a lot of then in the party think they are bigoted gammon - it's going to be a hell of a job to win them back.

We need to jettison a lot of the Corbynista outriders to repair the damage. The Canary, Novara Media, Skwawkbox, Bastani and all the rest have massively turned on Starmer because they feel their relevance slipping away - a Starmer shadow cabinet will not be a hard-left one and the likelihood is that the NEC will be taken out of Corbynista hands too. 

 

The key now is to get the likes of Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and David Lammy back into prominent positions. How Phillips managed to retain her large majority as a Remainer in a Leaver constituency is something from which the wider party needs to learn - probably because she criticises the architects of Brexit rather than the people who voted for it, which is something too many of the hard-left did. 

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10 hours ago, Bilo said:

We need to jettison a lot of the Corbynista outriders to repair the damage. The Canary, Novara Media, Skwawkbox, Bastani and all the rest have massively turned on Starmer because they feel their relevance slipping away - a Starmer shadow cabinet will not be a hard-left one and the likelihood is that the NEC will be taken out of Corbynista hands too. 

 

The key now is to get the likes of Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and David Lammy back into prominent positions. How Phillips managed to retain her large majority as a Remainer in a Leaver constituency is something from which the wider party needs to learn - probably because she criticises the architects of Brexit rather than the people who voted for it, which is something too many of the hard-left did. 

First paragraph couldn't agree more, Second paragraph couldn't agree less lol

 

Nandy obviously comes in but doubts over Phillip's ability (shadow position is going to need more than shouty emotion and tears), Cooper nearly blew one of the safest Labour seats in the country and Benn is synonymous with trying to block Brexit with his surrender bill.

 

I don't get the logic of wanting David "the black Francois" Lammy anywhere near the front bench, he's probably been the most vile towards leave voters than anyone in the place, he now seems to spend all his time just going around  calling everyone who disagrees with him a racist or a Nazi.

 

He is hilarious and will raise a laugh with his public blunders but is he front bench material? Imagine him being in a prominent position and doing something like this again - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21764636

 

Any excuse to post these again though lol

 

Then his performance coming last on Celebrity Mastermind thinking Henry VII succeeded Henry VIII, Versaillles was a French prison and thinking Marie Antoniette discovered Radium.

 

 

Birmingham Yardley is a right oddity though, almost impossible to read. A former swing seat between Lib Dems and Labour that voted Leave quite heavily, strange. It was still a big swing to the Tories though in December.

 

I honestly think Starmer needs to start completely afresh. Rebuilding Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet surely isn't the answer though.

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On 14/02/2020 at 09:35, Alf Bentley said:

Was always the No. 1 hotbed for the Militant Tendency back in the 80s.......the ghostly influence of Degsy Hatton lives....

I've always wondered what Labour meetings in Liverpool must be like. Thanks to Twitter we can see part of.

 

These people are deranged.

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