Guest post: If they cannot answer a simple question
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Lost in the fog, with added emphasis.
… political enemies who care much less about the issue than they enjoy watching Labour fall apart.
Maybe a party whose members and leader are unable, or unwilling, to define one of the classes of people whose protected characteristics are enshrined in UK law isn’t really ready to govern. If they don’t know what a woman is, they’re not fit for office. If they know what a woman is but are afraid to say it then they are even less fit for office. Sometimes standing up and saying “no” is more important than being “kind” (or “kind of scared.”)
Many (if not most) of those asking for Labour’s definition of woman are not “political enemies” but are simply trying to wake the party up. They realize that Labour’s position is wrong and misguided but are unwilling to let it slide. The Labour Party is being held to account by those whom it seeks to represent. Is this not the very heart of democracy? Accountability and representation? If they cannot answer a simple question, if they are willing to give away rights that are not theirs to give in order to avoid pissing off a tiny, aggressive minority making unreasonable and unethical demands, how can they be trusted to govern honestly and openly? How is it that women are expected to sacrifice their own political interests in favour of men who are trying to take their places and spaces? Would Labour expect to go unchallenged if it had screwed over workers rights in favour of bosses, in the process espousing a mistaken and distorted view of relevant law promulgated by the bosses themselves? Not bloody likely. Well, this is the same but worse, because they’re helped to screw over half the population in one go, and they’re too stupid or cowardly to acknowledge it.
I think it’s less worrying about the small number of trans persons who vote Labour and more about the much larger number of so-called “woke” voters who are young and rather daft regarding the question of what a woman is, but who are nevertheless an important Labour constituency. Labour can’t afford to piss them off compared to losing a few radical feminist votes, not in the short term anyway. The working class voter be they male or female is likely more concerned about their pocketbook and heating their home, and you can be sure Labour will pursue that issue while downplaying the question of what a woman is.
I’m far from a political enemy of Labour, or pretty much any leftist party. My politics have always been firmly left of centre. A function of having seen first hand what anti-poor, anti-women politics does. Most of my life leftist parties have fought the good fight to ensure real progress against poverty, increasing opportunities and equality for women, ethnic minorities, fighting against racism, fascism, homophobia etc. I’ve always felt that even the mildest right of centre governments in NZ have been fundamentally opposed to those things, even if only passively, although frequently quite actively.
Labour UK’s problem has been writ large in recent years. They have a huge anti-semitic wing, and an even bigger wing that is downright misogynistic. It’s not that others are attacking them for some minor and abstract policy, it’s that people who want to be able to support Labour are appalled that Labour itself has nailed itself to the mast of misogyny and has refused to resile from that position. Sadly, they are going to reap what they have sowed, and in many respects we’ll all be worse off for it.
Personally, here in NZ, I am contemplating not voting at the next election for the first time in my life. This is because literally every political party here has a headline policy they push that crosses a red line for me. That’s a first. We’re also fortunate here I guess that even our main right wing party (National) in their current form are unlikely to actively attempt to roll back women’s rights, Treaty obligations, or commit a full scale assault on the poor or voting rights. they are the party that has been happy to accept campaign advice from GOP consultants for decades though and they certainly have their own MAGA-lite wing.
If the leftwing parties of the West don’t start focusing on the real pretty much immediately, they face a decade or more of political annihilation, at best.
Rob, you are right on most counts above, but I think you have fallen for the Murdoch narrative re Corbyn and the supposed “anti Semitism” in UK Labour.
Supporting the rights of Palestinians for a homeland is not antisemitic, nor is opposing the Israeli policy of expanding “settlements”, cutting off water and other essential services to Palestine, or refusing to call all Palestinians terrorists.
Much of UK Labour’s problems can be traced back to the rightward march under Blair and his successors. Corbyn was the antidote and a Sharp Left Turn.
The Murdochracy campaigned hard and fast against Corbyn, playing loose with the truth, afraid that a decent leftist government would reign in his power.
Aus is currently in the phony election campaign phase, but Murdoch’s claws are all over the coverage, for example, screaming “How can Labor pay for $2.5 billion in Aged Care, whilst ignoring the $5.5 billion the Tories have wasted on submarines that never existed, the billions more on the Lockheed-Martin boondoggle (planes that can’t fly), half a billion for a dam with no business case and on and on and on.
The main reason your right-wing Nationals, ACT, New Cons, etc, are not as extreme as those in UK, US, AU, is you have so far escaped the clutches of Lord Molloch. In all our state capitals and major rural towns, the dominant media are all Murdoch owned or controlled.
And to add to the above, Corbyn was condemning Putin while Blair was cuddling up to him.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-was-right-about-putin-from-the-start/
The UK 2010 general election resulted in a three-way split between Labor, Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats: no one party had a majority. The Liberal Democrats could have formed a coalition government with either Labor or Conservatives; they chose the Conservatives.
I don’t follow British politics closely, but my impression is that the Lib Dems sold out their constituents and abandoned their principles for a chance to sit at the big peoples’ table. In 2010 the Lib Dems held 57 seats in Parliament; today they hold 13.
David, I’m certainly not expert enough with the situation to claim definitive knowledge, but I follow overseas political news reasonably closely. I think ,much of what you say about Blair/Murdoch and the like is true, or at least mostly true. In any event I tend to avoid Murdoch news outlets, or treat what they say with some suspicion.
Is Corbyn himself an anti-semite? I can’t be sure. He certainly has a long history of campaigning for Palestinian rights, but that doesn’t itself make someone an anti-semite. I was raised to believe that the Jews post WW2 came to an empty and neglected land and by hard work and sacrifice turned it into a fertile paradise, and that jealous savages were trying to destroy them. It was a pretty common narrative at the time. As I reached young adulthood it didn’t take much effort to realise that the truth was much, much, more complicated. These days I believe that the state of Israel and it’s inhabitants have a right to existence, peace and prosperity. But I also believe the same of the Palestinian people. I support moderates on both sides who can work toward achieving that. I deplore the attacks on Israel and Jewish people anywhere. I also deplore the appalling and frankly criminal behaviour of Israel toward the Palestinian people. I also have no idea how to end this deadlock without a bloodbath. Does anyone?
However, the UK Labour Party had a significant anti-semitism problem. The EHRC found so, and the party itself, under new leadership, admitted to that. Corbin may not have been anti-semitic himself, but there were elements of the party that were and he did little or nothing to root it out, despite his protestations to the contrary. There’s a lot online about this, from sources left and right. I wouldn’t take everything in this link from the BBC as gospel, but it’s a reasonable summary and kicking off point.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45030552
One other thing about UK Labour. It’s problems didn’t start with Blair. Prior to him it was mired in an ossified form of unionism and leftism that refused to recognise that the world had fundamentally changed. A spent political force facing oblivion. It’s a lesson that political parties have to (1) stand for something, but (2) be nimble enough to change methods, tactics, and expression of ideas to remain relevant. I suspect many political leftist organisations see the trans movement as the last great defining social battle and are trying to get ahead of the curve. In reality it’s a side show and many of the lefts meaningful victories of the last hundred years or so are being actively rolled back while they dither.
@3 I think where this veers into ‘anti-Semitism’ is that while the Israeli government has been a bad actor (while many people and groups in Israel oppose and fight against the colonialist policies of its government), the governments of other countries that behave equally badly, or worse, toward indigenous minorities are somehow not as visible or significant or worthy of denunciation. Although it can be argued that non-Israeli Jews feel more kinship with and responsibility for the behaviour of the Israeli government and are thus understandably more focused on its crimes.
That’s… pretty much New Labour though.
I mean, even from people who support that shift, you get the criticism that pre-Blair Labour “was mired in an ossified form of unionism and leftism that refused to recognise that the world had fundamentally changed. A spent political force facing oblivion” to quote Rob.
And there is some merit to that.
The British economy is 80% service sector. Contrast with 1950, when it was an even split between service sector and everything else. Classical “workers rights” approaches that focus on the shop floor, need to have shop floors to be relevant enough to win elections.
So however one may feel about it, Labour hasn’t really been a worker’s party for decades, to the point where suggesting it should be is controversial within the party.
Labour’s problem is that it is a centrist, not leftist, party. Centrism is often the politics of Nimbyism. This is what it means to be economically conservative, and socially liberal – left only so far as it is not your backyard.
I’m a guy, women’s rights aren’t my backyard. Rapists getting into women’s prisons for example, isn’t going to hurt me much, if I went to prison it would be to a men’s prison and having fewer rapists around would be, if anything, to my benefit in that circumstance.
Women’s sports, are sports I don’t compete in. Any concerns around trans inclusion in women’s sports aren’t in my backyard. I don’t go to women’s toilets unless the men’s side is out of order and there’s a pre-arrangement to that effect, so, that’s not really in my backyard either.
I could very easily proclaim TWAW and the costs of saying that, would fall on someone else. I can proclaim “TERFs” deeply “privileged” because it isn’t my prison, it isn’t my sports, and it isn’t my toilet.
At the same time, I’m relatively economically comfortable with a positive bank balance. I’ve got no debt, I’ve got savings. Raising wages, putting in market protections for local businesses and building a strong social welfare system raises economic demand, which also increases production thus reducing unemployment, but at the cost of higher inflation. If I were in debt, higher inflation would mean the bank eating some of that debt, but as I have savings, that’s not personally desirable for me.
If I was British, I would be the target market for New Labour. Being economically leftwing costs me money, whereas being socially leftwing costs me nothing. Centrism has the profound benefit of not being in my backyard.
Labour cannot campaign on economics, because to do so is to tread in the Nimby’s backyard. Pushing identity bullshit thus has to serve as a means of establishing leftwing credibility in its stead.
The current state of disorder within Labour is a natural result of centrist Nimbyism, and not everybody is a Nimby. To break out of that, requires some serious consideration of what Labour is really about – sans identity issues.
[…] a comment by Bruce Gorton on If they cannot answer a simple […]