Ah, OK. Think Rayner called Johnson scum and won’t retract until Johnson retracts his alleged views on homosexuality, race and women? Starmer said he didn’t endorse Rayner’s language or something. Storm in a teacup.
The Duffield disagreement is much more meaningful.
I actually enjoyed that to be honest, and would rather he not have commented. I feel that it highlights very well the free pass that the Conservatives seem to get with regards to racism, relative to Labour.
That said, I’m not from the constituencies nor profiles of voters that they would be trying to target, so I’m not sure how well it would play to those targets. My gut feel is that many of them are essentially lost to Labour anyway, simply because apart from economics they are just more well-aligned with the Conservatives.
I think there are enough bad actors that there is in fact a problem here that will not be going away - quite the opposite. In Canadian women’s prisons, a generation ago the level of sexual violence was so low that there was no systematic method of tracking incidence. It was rare enough that any individual incident stood by itself as a problem. The incidence level is now converging on that observed in male prisons, though it remains lower. It is striking that the correctional service has resisted providing the data relevant to that attributable to transwomen, but to be blunt the criminal docket is a matter of public record. While that may not be relevant to the majority of law-abiding transwomen, self-identification and the resulting access to spaces such as prisons and rape crisis shelters has created a significant problem. Simply waving it away is not working.
100%.
In less than a generation so many advances over centuries in defence of women’s rights risk being superseded/impinged by a determination to recognise certain trans rights and gender equality without full consideration for the consequences.
I’m not sure that is correct. Leadership was clearly a big issue - however, there was a lot of criticism being made of the policies being offered. And, we discussed at the time on TIA the way the manifesto grew as the election drew nearer indicated there was a problem with what they were trying to promote.
I think Starmer has been trying to build a platform both for himself and the party to move forward but has just found himself undermined both by the left wing of the party (and perhaps internal cabinet squabbles) and by events outside of the party. It all gets lost amongst the maelstrom.
Haven’t seen any of the conference stuff yet.
I think it was more of the pre-bloating bits that were well-received. I think the manifesto itself was fairly welcomed, but the desperate additions leading up to the election were rightly seen as being gimmicky?
Not sure where the idea that he’s getting undermined is coming from? He’s explicitly backtracking on the platform he campaigned on to become leader, barely even a year after getting elected. Unless I’m much mistaken, hasn’t a lot of the conflict come from his own actions rather than the “left”? Things like unnecessarily changing the party elections process, limiting the ability of local party branches to deselect the local MPs, when the focus really should have been about defining who Labour under him are policy-wise.
I’m more than happy to be corrected if I’m mistaken, but all these are pretty much unforced errors. Competent leadership would not have made those actions at a time when Labour needed to broadcast a strong message of who they are and what they stand for as a party. He doesn’t even have the political capital within the party to pull off those changes smoothly. Arguably he did manage to achieve some changes in the end, but only by begging for support, getting it barely over the line at the last minute.
Why was this whole kerfuffle even necessary?
EDIT: To address the original point more directly, here’s something from YouGov in November 2019, around a month before the elections (and the ridiculous things being pushed into the manifesto).
He has been targeted by Bastoni, Jones et al from as soon as he won the leadership contest, and it’s continued through out his time as leader. It’s an important reason as to why he has had difficulty getting his message across.
I haven’t been following the party elections process stuff, but I think much of the issue around deselection is precisely because it is seen as being used to destabilise the party.
I’m genuinely not sure about Labour. I did this quiz today and policy wise, Labour are clearly the most aligned with most of my values, but I would never have voted for them under Corbyn and I’m not sure what I would do if there were an election tomorrow.
Last local elections I did a lib dem/green party combo, but in a general election that’s essentially a wasted vote.
But there’s something so wrong internally with the Labour party at the moment, I don’t know that they would get my vote as shit a job as the tories have done recently.
Not sure if that’s a reflection of Canadas legal system or ability to self identify. The UK does publish its statistics and it seems the problem is the other way.
From the prison population in England and Wales of 85K, 163 identify as transgender. (0.2% the same as general population)
During 9 year period, there have been 5 incidents in UK prisons. Of those 5, that includes woman that identify as men, men that identify as women and those medically defined as intersexed. Same period 124 incidents of general sexual assault in woman’s prisons.
If you contrast that with how many are the victims, those recognised a transgender were abused 11 times in a single year. Number of suicides were 5.
Irrespective of sex we all have right to feel safe. The number of bad actors is a rare event in the UK prisons at least (roughly 1 incidence every 2 years).
For me the solution is facilities especially for those who are transgender (as much for their own protection) and/or identification if those prisoners that represent a risk to other prisoners and treat them as dangerous.
They had Steve Reed, Labour MP, on BBC 5Live as I came home from work. He came across very well and spoke calmly, reasonably and intelligently on a few issues (mostly the HGV driver shortage, fuel issues, and Rayner’s use of “scum”).
He was also asked, off the cuff because the news was just breaking, about Andy McDonald’s resignation from the shadow cabinet. I thought he dealt with that very well too.
UK data is wildly untrustworthy, it simply does not match the docket, and that is down to how the data is reported. Frankly, I think we have seen enough in the past few years not to trust UK sexual assault data at all, let alone that covering a prison population. Of the 124 incidents in UK women’s prisons between 2010 and 2018 however, seven were carried out by trans prisoners. The 11 victims figure you cite is for all UK prisons - that is not really a problem that is happening in womens’ prisons, so from the point of view of the fears of women, it is irrelevant.
Canadian data doesn’t exist, which is a different problem.
I agree that dedicated facilities are the way forward, but that is seen in many circles as inherently a violation of rights.
From:
The question of whether transwomen match male or female patterns of criminality is specifically addressed by the 2020 FOI referenced by Fair Play For Women (who have submitted evidence to the Committee). This is first time there has been official data to compare the rate of sex offending in 3 different groups. Men vs women vs transwomen. The hyperlinks below link to the FOI spreadsheet.
MOJ stats show 76 of the 129 male-born prisoners identifying as transgender (not counting any with GRCs) have at least 1 conviction of sexual offence. This includes 36 convictions for rape and 10 for attempted rape. These are clearly male type crimes (rape is defined as penetration with a penis).
Here is the number compared with figures for sex offending rates in men and women over the same period.
Comparisons of official MOJ statistics from March / April 2019 (most recent official count of transgender prisoners):
76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3%
13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison =
16.8%
The state of the opposition parties today.
That’s a whole new low for this thread. Quoting GB news.
Seems fair enough to me.
What I don’t understand is how the narrative ‘there is something wrong internally with the Labour party’ is a more compelling reason not to vote for Labour than ‘they’ve literally killed tens of thousands of people through negligence and incompetence, and have proven to be a corrupt self-serving, cabal of out of touch public school boys who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire’ is a compelling reason to not vote conservative.
I don’t mean to pick on you, because there are millions like you, but when you survey the fucking state the country has been left in by a twelve years of Conservative Government, and when you know that Labour policy’s and values closely align with your own, and you’re still actively trying to think of reasons not to vote for them, it’s maddening.
The extent to which the conservatives have bewitched this country into disregarding all their failures, and almost disconnected them from the consequences of their governance, is really weird to me. I don’t understand why the conservatives can ride into power with huge majorities while fucking everyone over, whereas Labour have to be absolutely perfect to get anywhere.
Anything but to the right. Got it.
No, but that’s the UK’s attempt at Trumpism. It’s so screwed up Andrew Neil left
Absolutely spot on. The same can be seen in the US with the Reps/Dems.
