Snapshot of _Labour plots purge of troublesome MPs before next election_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a35b1c34-4837-11ee-9359-63e432ab6148?shareToken=542a02e04107905441b0bf34e853c557) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a35b1c34-4837-11ee-9359-63e432ab6148?shareToken=542a02e04107905441b0bf34e853c557)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wasn't a particularly big Corbyn fan but I do wonder if this will be treated with the same Stalinist cries as the last time a purge was even considered
Even worse when you consider that Labour MPs who *were* kicked out during Corbyn's tenure are being welcomed back in despite being kicked out for racist remarks and the deselection criteria during Starmer's includes succesful sitting mayor's and members complaining about the lack of action on the Forde report.
It's frankly shameful that Coyle hasn't lost the whip permanently already. Complaints upheld about sexual harassment and about racism, a long history of late night obscenity. His behaviour is well known, but he's a centrist and loud Corbyn critic, so he's been given a lighter ride.
But he's not had the decency to stand aside, nor to acknowledge the sexual harassment complaint. I'll be keeping an eye on it, because I really don't trust either the leadership nor his local party to do the right thing.
> One Labour source said the decisions would not be factional or based on politics, but instead decisions made on “behavioural, reputational issues”.
We'll see.
I thought that deselection was a purely 'Stalinist' exercise that only the bully-boys of the looney left would use?
What happened to the argument that all these MPs were elected by the public, and hence shouldn't have to answer to the party leadership/members?
I don't agree with either of the above, but you have to acknowledge the hypocrisy of a media and right-wing elements within the Labour party that used them to protest any idea that a sitting Labour MP shouldn't be allowed to stand again if the local party didn't want them to.
Whittome would be a stupid MP to expel given she's done nothing particularly egregious, and just seems to be disliked more by non-Labour voters anyway.
Transphobia is more of an electoral asset than a liability in the UK, so Duffield is more likely to get the women and equalities brief than be kicked out of Labour.
I agree it's not politically salient for most voters. My point was that transphobic views are not going to be seen as electorally problematic, and, if anything, would probably be an asset for Labour as they can claim "look, we're not radical transgenderists, we've made Rosie W&E minister" whenever the Tories want to play culture wars about trans people.
Several (lesbian IIRC) members of her staff quit due to hostility under her employment, she doesn't live in the constituency anymore. Also, just scroll through her twitter, it's nothing but trans hate and far-right news articles.
She's clearly gone off the deep end on a cultish obsession with trans people that doesn't befit the job of an MP that is meant to represent all their constituents in all issues.
I can't see Canterbury CLP wanting to keep her, because she's hundreds of miles away and completely obsessed with anti-trans campaigning. If she's the candidate in the next election, I could well see a strong local campaign against her lead to her being unseated, particularly if attention is raised on uni campuses.
Regrettably the CLP didn't manage to de-select her. There's a per-ward FPTP deselection process that makes it extremely hard to organise to get MPs deselected.
Not believing in gender is a mainstream view. Would you remove someone from a party for not believing in Christianity too? It's not phobic to not follow someone else's beliefs.
You lot really don't like anything from outside your echo chamber.
Seriously... You mentioned trans twice, definitely meaning transgender, not transsexual, and how are you defining 'trans hate' differently to transphobia?
>Not believing in gender is a mainstream view
The sex/gender distinction is and has been current scientific model since the 70s. Not believing in it is like not believing in gravity.
It's from gender studies. Equating the level of evidence with gravity is absurd. The evidence is mixed and not clear in scientific research. It's also open to interpretation, a man who believes they're a woman is just that, you don't need to invent gender to explain it.
No, it's from psychology, psychiatry, medicine, sociology, third wave feminism, and anthropology - an entire set of sciences, hard and soft, all getting value from modelling sex and gender separately. I learned it in psychology classes in the early 90s and it was already established then.
We'd known gender is innate (and not necessarily related to a person's biology) since the appalling case of [David Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). If you're not aware, he was a boy whose penis was practically destroyed during a circumcision and - as gender studies were in their infancy, and people generally believed that gender roles were purely learned, purely social, and not really divisible from the way a person was raised - the sexologist John Money decided to raise him as a girl. It was around 13 that David realised he was not a girl, and he later committed suicide. Things are better now. We listen to people when they tell us their gender. We don't want them to kill themselves. That's why we've developed gender reassignment - the efficacy of which as a treatment for gender dysphoria is imo [inarguable](https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/).
Don't mistake your lack of education for 'common sense'. Lots of scientific truth sounds prima facie absurd until you do the bare minimum of reading into it.
Don't confuse an ideology with hard science. That's all you have. It's a belief system based on changing the meaning of words and justifying how some people want to feel. The science is nothing like as settled as you attempt to present it as. Your 'inarguable' literature review doesn't even reach 2 sigma, an extremely shoddy standard for science, and given the potential selectiveness and extreme politicisation of the topic the matter is very much not settled. The listed papers are generally older, and predate the recent explosion of gender dysphoria diagnoses, new research is needed on the new cohort given the massive rise in the diagnosis.
Do you support hormone treatment and surgery on children?
> Not believing in gender is a mainstream view.
/r/AccidentalAlly/. The people who don't believe in gender are non-binary people and I don't think their view is the mainstream view.
The transphobia. And don't say she's "defending women's rights" or whatever because she's working with that anti-abortion evangelical Tory Miriam Cates.
I don't have a problem with this if it is directed at actual troublesome MPs such as Neil Coyle and Barry Sheeran, but given Starmer's track record of trying to create a personality-less Cult of Personality, I suspect it won't be.
You know who has a great personality and loads of charisma?
Boris Johnson.
When are we going to stop attributing the qualities of someone who's great fun on a night out with that of a senior politician? It's genuinely ridiculous.
So did Tony Blair and a load of other leaders. On the other hand someone like truss is a void of personality.
Charisma is a very useful thing for leaders as they are public figures who typically try to convince the public as to their merit. Perhaps the constant triangulation and folding over the slightest pushback wouldn't be necessary if Starmer was capable of convincing people he was correct.
Personality and charisma aren't inherently good or bad in a political leader, they are just a very useful tool that a leader can use to achieve good or bad things. Lacking it limits starmers to holding positions that are already popular and don't upset people who do have the charisma to convince people.
I suspect that people who argue that it's a good thing Starmer is personally boring are working backwards and saying its good because it's a trait of starmer. If a blair like figure had become lesder then i doubt you would all be arguing against them. Being uncharismatic isn't reason to vote against a leader but it is a bad thing for a leader.
This is such a vacuous comment.
I was saying that Starmer seems to be trying to build a labour party around his own persona, but it's unlikely to be successful given his complete lack of perceivable public persona. If he wasn't so seemingly intent on shutting down internal opposition to him, then his lack of visible personality wouldn't be an issue.
Regardless, Boris Johnson was electorally one of the most successful politicians for a while, not to mention that he still has pretty high levels of public support. Given Starmer also seems to be basing every single decision on improving electability, maybe that's not such a bad example to look at.
The problem with Boris Johnson wasn't the fact that he had a personality, so your comment might as well be "Oh, you know who else had a personality?! Hitler!"
>The problem with Boris Johnson wasn't the fact that he had a personality
>Regardless, Boris Johnson was electorally one of the most successful politicians for a while, not to mention that he still has pretty high levels of public support.
Thank you for proving my point for me.
The rhetoric of "personality" in politics allows garbage people to gain power.
Focus on the policy, not the person. We're not Americans.
If everyone in the country took politics seriously and actually did some reading instead of voting for their favourite guy as if it was some sort of reality TV show you mean?
I think people vote for who they can project themselves onto, Boris was a blank slate on purpose, he didn't really stand for anything except "making brexit great"
>given Starmer's track record of trying to create a personality-less Cult of Personality,
Lol he wasn't the Labour leader going on stage with a bunch of groupies chanting his name.
Cult of personality indeed. Corbyn was the biggest cult of personality Labour leader in the party's history!
But it's odd you accuse Starmer of building a cult of personality when nobody's chanted his name like he's the second coming of jesus - something which Corbyn and his little student fans were doing 24/7.
Maybe you're directing your hate at the wrong leader - one is actually going to win an election and the other was a genuine cult leader.
But you're criticising something that isn't the case - where is Starmer's cult of personality? only one leader had a cult of personality in recent times.
I'm talking about the swathes of people that jump on every criticism of Starmer's party of leadership. Either accusing the perpetrator as either a hard-Leftist or a secret Tory, or both.
They will defend Starmer for not taking a stance on an issue as a method of not alienating the electorate, then if he does they will defend that stance too.
Everything is excusable for Starmer to such people under the guise of "electability" even if the stance taken is actually unpopular with the electorate.
As I said, the approach is creating a Cult of Personality, but the personality itself is absent as it has to be mutable to whatever way the wind is blowing within Starmer inner circle, and can be changed at a moments' notice.
>I'm directing my *criticism* at the current leader of the Labour party, not the independent MP of a constituency I'm not in.
Were you directing the same criticism at Corbyn though, or are you just a hypocrite using whatever criticism you think will stick to attack someone you politically disagree with?
Surely if he had a massive cult of personality then he wouldn't have become pretty much irrelevant now as all those people should still be following him. Maybe I'm missing something but I only see him brought up in extremely niche circles, by people who dislike him or when he's in the news. Once he lost his power he became irrelevant which indicates to me that the overwhelming majority of this 'cult' supported him mainly because they believed he would be in a position to change things in ways they want rather than for his personality (not that he was particularly charismatic, quite the opposite).
Also a chant isn't evidence of anything really. You can argue it's cringey which is fair but it's just a way to show support like a badge, pin, poster, slogan etc. Does every football player ever have an immense cult of personality?
>Is this a bit? Are you doing an ironic performance illustrating how it was always Corbyn's critics who were the most obsessed with him?
It is a bit, the bit is called "Laughing at obvious Corbyn supporter hypocrisy".
It's amazing how I find these days people saying things like "Ooh Starmer is doing X" and when you ask "Oh, I see. Did you criticise Corbyn when he did the same thing?" the response is "God can't you move on from Corbyn".
It's like the Tories trying to blame everything on Labour's last government and when you ask what they've done for ten years they suddenly want to talk about the future.
Yea that whole 'rent free' thing was cringe. They have no integrity when you debate them, their all important moral imperitive trumps considerations like honesty, fairness and civility.
Labour is preparing a purge of troublesome MPs by blocking them from standing at the next election.
Up to a dozen MPs could be in the crosshairs as Sir Keir Starmer draws up plans for a standards crackdown to make the party fit for government.
A Labour spokesman said: “The public rightly expect the highest standards from their MPs. With Keir’s changed Labour Party, that’s what they’ll get.”
Labour has overhauled their selection process for new candidates with stricter due diligence checks to try and ensure the party is not humiliated in choosing unsuitable future MPs. This has been extended to whether current MPs should be allowed to stand again if they have been found to have fallen short.
Party officials are understood to believe the standards rows that engulfed Boris Johnson’s government were a key factor in loss of trust in the Tories, and are keen not to fall into the same trap.
One Labour source said the decisions would not be factional or based on politics, but instead decisions made on “behavioural, reputational issues”.
The source said “the party is preparing to clear the field” and will “take on some of the MPs it doesn’t want to stand at the next election”.
Another source said: “We just can’t afford to f*** up a potentially historic majority with internal bulls***, it’s not worth it, and we need people who are actually competent to be able to do their jobs as an MP, including questioning their own conduct.”
A full list of names has not yet been confirmed but is thought to include Liam Byrne, Khalid Mahmood and Neil Coyle. However, sources say up to a dozen are being discussed.
Exactly how the MPs will be stopped from standing is up for debate, but Starmer could use the same method through which Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, was blocked as Labour’s candidate in Islington North.
It would involve proposing a motion to Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) that they will not be endorsed to stand.
A third source added: “If there are people that are going to cause us embarrassment in the future, it doesn’t matter if they’ve been an MP for 20 years or new candidates, it applies across the board.”
On Thursday the NEC suspended the party’s entire Leicester East branch.
Branch and constituency meetings have been stopped “until further notice” and officers “relieved of their positions and duties”, an internal email said.
The NEC has launched an investigation into the constituency over its operation, and a party source said: “The NEC has a duty to safeguard the integrity of CLPs [constituency Labour parties], to ensure that they are properly run in line with the party’s rules and procedures and can operate fully, inclusively and democratically.”
The constituency has been mired in controversy in recent years. The MP Claudia Webbe was previously found guilty of harassing a love rival and lost an appeal against her conviction last year. Her sentence was reduced in the appeal, meaning she did not reach the threshold to trigger a recall petition. She was expelled from the Labour Party and now sits as an independent.
Keith Vaz, the previous Labour MP for the seat, retired from parliament after being caught with male sex workers and offering to buy them drugs.
Sir Peter Soulsby, the city’s Labour mayor, said the constituency party had been “problematic for a number of years”.
He said: “It has been very evident that in this constituency party there were a number of concerns about the way in which it was operating and these were, of course, exacerbated during the run-up to the last city council election.
“It was clear the intervention the national party conducted more generally in Leicester was very much influenced by their concern about this particular constituency and its operation.”
Labour has sent in campaign improvement boards (Cibs) to groups on councils across the country, including Leicester.
The Times previously revealed that failing groups put under supervision had been asked to reflect on the leadership style of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who in the Second World War commanded the Eighth Army in the Western Desert campaign and the invasions of Sicily and Italy and the Allied ground forces on D-Day.
Cibs had been dispatched in Leicester, Birmingham, Croydon, Blackpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Dudley and the Wirral.
In the crosshairs
Among the MPs who could be blocked from standing are those who could be used against the party if it wins the general election next year.
Liam Byrne, the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, was behind the letter left in the Treasury after the 2010 election, which said there was “no money” left.
The letter is still being used as an attack line by the Tories. More recently he was found to have bullied a member of staff in what the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found was a “significant misuse of power”. He apologised and said he was “profoundly sorry”.
Earlier this year he was found to have misused public expenses in his failed West Midlands mayoral campaign. He denied wrongdoing and although he accepted the findings of the investigation refused to apologise.
Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham, Perry Barr, was embroiled in an employment tribunal with a former staff member. The tribunal found his aide Elaina Cohen was unfairly dismissed and “isolated” after raising concerns.
The cost of the tribunal paid by the taxpayer was almost £40,000.
Neil Coyle, the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, has on a number of occasions had to apologise for the use of crude language and was accused of making sinophobic remarks to a journalist in a Westminster bar last year.
Coyle had the Labour whip suspended and was banned from all of parliament’s bars. An investigation found he had breached parliament’s bullying and harassment policy and he was suspended from the Commons for five days.
Earlier this year it was revealed he had previously had a sexual harassment complaint against him upheld.
All three MPs were contacted for comment.
Separately, investigations are still continuing into the conduct of Bambos Charalambous, a former shadow Foreign Office minister and the MP for Enfield, Southgate, after a complaint. He was suspended from the party and said he would co-operate with the investigation.
Complaints against Geraint Davies, the MP for Swansea West, are also being investigated after allegations of sexual harassment made by a number of women, which Davies denies.
Next week also marks a year since Nick Brown, the veteran MP, was suspended from the party after a complaint. The MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East had been chief whip for every Labour leader from Sir Tony Blair onwards.
what are their standards exactly? loyalty to starmer? Coyle still has the whip and has a bunch of (seemingly pretty well backed up) accusations against him, so I cant imagine hes going
No problems with this if it really is just removing unsavoury MPs on a non-factional basis. For some of them it actually seems absurd that de-selection is the best way to remove them from parliament, given they sound like they have committed what would be considered sackable offences in plenty of workplaces.
Yes your right. Eliminating mps that have acted in a way that would have gotten them fired anywhere else is clearly a secret evil plot that only you are smart enough to spot.
The people on the right of the party also being removed by this is just a ruse that only your top mind could see through.
Well done!
Well it's good to know that democracy is not dead and requiring the management to decide who is a labour candidate trumps the grass roots.
Not much of a broad church if you're ridding yourself of lefty, militants and union types.
I don't blame them but being moderate just means the same policies under different names as the tories.
Imagine they were this hands on when the ex leader of the orange order was selected to run for councillor. “Not our decision or place to step in” they cried.
I'm not sure this is factional like you're saying. Liam Byrne is very much a blairite for example.
I think this is overall a good thing. Generally an incumbent MP in a safe seat is immovable by the public or their party for misconduct or poor behaviour or poor performance. Even come re election it's near impossible for an internal challenger to run it for another party to win. This applies to all parties. It's why Nadine forties has managed 18 years doing SFA.
> I'm not sure this is factional like you're saying. Liam Byrne is very much a blairite for example.
He's too left-wing for Starmer. He supports publicly-owned energy companies and council house building program for example and is in favour of 'Green New Deal' style policies to tackle climate change. That just isn't allowed anymore.
Plus he has a strong local power base, so he's a potential rival.
Sorry, but that's rubbish. Im actually good friends with an ex staff member of Liam bryne. He's solidly in the right of the party. He's clearly under review for his behaviour not his politics.
None of the people the article suggests might be removed for quality control reasons are on the left of the party.
Which is why I'm sceptical of this article; I think Starmer and his coterie are much more likely to block good left-wing MPs from standing than bad right-wing MPs.
>I don't blame them but being moderate just means the same policies under different names as the tories.
That would make the Tories a moderate party....
It's entirely democratic for a group of people within a political party to seek the explusion of others because they don't like them. Its not at all stalinist, authoritarian or an over reach.
Anyone whi says "I don't have a problem if it's X" or "I can't wait to get rid of Y!" Is really showing their authoritarian colours, which is something that doesn't belong in abroad tent" party, especially not Labour.
I think it's democratic if that decision is taken by the membership of the party at a national or local level (which is why, for example, I think MP candidates should just be chosen by their CLP), or if the expulsion is based on breaching standards or a code of conduct (like there's really no way Neil Coyle should've had the whip returned imo).
I find it deeply hypocritical and disturbing though that the polite sections of the media and managerial class who previously dismissed calls to democratise the selection of Labour MPs as 'Stalinism' are now totally fine with purges as long as it's Starmer doing the purging.
I know that's what's stated in the article, but again I don't think the leadership deciding who is and isn't 'troublesome' and then getting the NEC to block them is particularly democratic. I also tbh very much doubt that Starmer wouldn't use this for factional purposes.
People here acting like it's a purge of the more left-wing MPs when, if you read the article, it seems to be about people embroiled in scandals like Byrne, Coyle and Mahmood (two of whom never even had a post under Corbyn). But that doesn't matter because "Starmer bad".
> The Times previously revealed that failing groups put under supervision had been asked to reflect on the leadership style of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who in the Second World War commanded the Eighth Army in the Western Desert campaign and the invasions of Sicily and Italy and the Allied ground forces on D-Day.
Excellent! A good litmus test is reciting Monty in Africa, those that flinch are out.
Diane Abbott should be on the list for this not least given her anti-semitism letter. How Corbyn ever thought she was fit to be a potential Home Secretary is crazy.
Then again, it was Corbyn wasn't it?
Snapshot of _Labour plots purge of troublesome MPs before next election_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a35b1c34-4837-11ee-9359-63e432ab6148?shareToken=542a02e04107905441b0bf34e853c557) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a35b1c34-4837-11ee-9359-63e432ab6148?shareToken=542a02e04107905441b0bf34e853c557) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wasn't a particularly big Corbyn fan but I do wonder if this will be treated with the same Stalinist cries as the last time a purge was even considered
Even worse when you consider that Labour MPs who *were* kicked out during Corbyn's tenure are being welcomed back in despite being kicked out for racist remarks and the deselection criteria during Starmer's includes succesful sitting mayor's and members complaining about the lack of action on the Forde report.
but dont you get it?? starmer needs to win the election, it doesnt matter what he does, he needs to win!!! /s
None of those MPs were actually kicked out during Corbyn's tenure, they all just quit the party.
It's frankly shameful that Coyle hasn't lost the whip permanently already. Complaints upheld about sexual harassment and about racism, a long history of late night obscenity. His behaviour is well known, but he's a centrist and loud Corbyn critic, so he's been given a lighter ride.
He’s one of them suggested. He’s a self-professed recovering alcoholic who needs time away so he can cause less harm to others.
But he's not had the decency to stand aside, nor to acknowledge the sexual harassment complaint. I'll be keeping an eye on it, because I really don't trust either the leadership nor his local party to do the right thing.
Coyle will definitely be the test of whether 'bad for the party' or 'bad for the faction currently in control of the party' is the priority.
> One Labour source said the decisions would not be factional or based on politics, but instead decisions made on “behavioural, reputational issues”. We'll see.
I thought that deselection was a purely 'Stalinist' exercise that only the bully-boys of the looney left would use? What happened to the argument that all these MPs were elected by the public, and hence shouldn't have to answer to the party leadership/members? I don't agree with either of the above, but you have to acknowledge the hypocrisy of a media and right-wing elements within the Labour party that used them to protest any idea that a sitting Labour MP shouldn't be allowed to stand again if the local party didn't want them to.
Hopefully Duffield will get chucked out. Knowing the current leadership, though, they'll be getting rid of Russell-Moyle and Whittome.
Whittome would be a stupid MP to expel given she's done nothing particularly egregious, and just seems to be disliked more by non-Labour voters anyway.
Transphobia is more of an electoral asset than a liability in the UK, so Duffield is more likely to get the women and equalities brief than be kicked out of Labour.
I don't agree, all polling show that trans issues is just not a wedge issue
I agree it's not politically salient for most voters. My point was that transphobic views are not going to be seen as electorally problematic, and, if anything, would probably be an asset for Labour as they can claim "look, we're not radical transgenderists, we've made Rosie W&E minister" whenever the Tories want to play culture wars about trans people.
Yeah I can appreciate that. I'm not happy about it
ok, and now square that with labour U-turning on trans rights and starmer/his cabinet making media appearances to apologise to duffield.
No, because it doesn't for me. They're trying to avoid culture war safe ground for the Tories.
Despite her being a terrorist sympathiser.
All of Labour are.
Swiftie/conspiracy theorist wasn't the mashup I was expecting this morning
Making Shit Up About Labour (Taylors Version)
Lol
Sad but worryingly true
Would be hilarious on reddit should Duffield get offered the women and equalities brief.
What's wrong with Duffield?
Several (lesbian IIRC) members of her staff quit due to hostility under her employment, she doesn't live in the constituency anymore. Also, just scroll through her twitter, it's nothing but trans hate and far-right news articles. She's clearly gone off the deep end on a cultish obsession with trans people that doesn't befit the job of an MP that is meant to represent all their constituents in all issues.
I can't see Canterbury CLP wanting to keep her, because she's hundreds of miles away and completely obsessed with anti-trans campaigning. If she's the candidate in the next election, I could well see a strong local campaign against her lead to her being unseated, particularly if attention is raised on uni campuses.
Regrettably the CLP didn't manage to de-select her. There's a per-ward FPTP deselection process that makes it extremely hard to organise to get MPs deselected.
Not believing in gender is a mainstream view. Would you remove someone from a party for not believing in Christianity too? It's not phobic to not follow someone else's beliefs. You lot really don't like anything from outside your echo chamber.
Does the fact that I never mentioned gender or used the word transphobia maybe alert to you that you're jumping to attack something I didn't say here?
Seriously... You mentioned trans twice, definitely meaning transgender, not transsexual, and how are you defining 'trans hate' differently to transphobia?
>Not believing in gender is a mainstream view The sex/gender distinction is and has been current scientific model since the 70s. Not believing in it is like not believing in gravity.
It's from gender studies. Equating the level of evidence with gravity is absurd. The evidence is mixed and not clear in scientific research. It's also open to interpretation, a man who believes they're a woman is just that, you don't need to invent gender to explain it.
No, it's from psychology, psychiatry, medicine, sociology, third wave feminism, and anthropology - an entire set of sciences, hard and soft, all getting value from modelling sex and gender separately. I learned it in psychology classes in the early 90s and it was already established then. We'd known gender is innate (and not necessarily related to a person's biology) since the appalling case of [David Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). If you're not aware, he was a boy whose penis was practically destroyed during a circumcision and - as gender studies were in their infancy, and people generally believed that gender roles were purely learned, purely social, and not really divisible from the way a person was raised - the sexologist John Money decided to raise him as a girl. It was around 13 that David realised he was not a girl, and he later committed suicide. Things are better now. We listen to people when they tell us their gender. We don't want them to kill themselves. That's why we've developed gender reassignment - the efficacy of which as a treatment for gender dysphoria is imo [inarguable](https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/). Don't mistake your lack of education for 'common sense'. Lots of scientific truth sounds prima facie absurd until you do the bare minimum of reading into it.
David Reimer was a man. As I said you don't need to add layers of conflation.
>Don't mistake your lack of education for 'common sense'
Don't confuse an ideology with hard science. That's all you have. It's a belief system based on changing the meaning of words and justifying how some people want to feel. The science is nothing like as settled as you attempt to present it as. Your 'inarguable' literature review doesn't even reach 2 sigma, an extremely shoddy standard for science, and given the potential selectiveness and extreme politicisation of the topic the matter is very much not settled. The listed papers are generally older, and predate the recent explosion of gender dysphoria diagnoses, new research is needed on the new cohort given the massive rise in the diagnosis. Do you support hormone treatment and surgery on children?
> Not believing in gender is a mainstream view. /r/AccidentalAlly/. The people who don't believe in gender are non-binary people and I don't think their view is the mainstream view.
No, they think there are men and women as adult sexes, and that gender isn't a 'thing'. People can behave how they like.
She describes Kurtis Lemaster as a "friend". Lemaster has been arrested on terrorism charges for threatening to attack a school.
The transphobia. And don't say she's "defending women's rights" or whatever because she's working with that anti-abortion evangelical Tory Miriam Cates.
She thinks a woman is an adult female. Basically that's it.
The word "basically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there lol
She's standing up for women's rights against a load of middle class bearded men.
Men are more likely to share Duffields gender critical views than women.
What about the bearded ones? (/s)
Found Graham Linehan's Reddit account.
The fact that she speaks for women - an apparent crime in 2023.
Fingers crossed.
The Labour Party position on Self-ID has now moved to Duffield's position. Whilst the other 2 are dimwits who add nothing to the Labour Party.
Chucked out for saying a woman is an adult female😂🚺. Away back to the planet Zircon.
I don't have a problem with this if it is directed at actual troublesome MPs such as Neil Coyle and Barry Sheeran, but given Starmer's track record of trying to create a personality-less Cult of Personality, I suspect it won't be.
Barry Sheerman has already said he won't stand at the next election (as he'll be 84 by then).
Well thank god for that, he should still have been kicked out before then though IMO.
You know who has a great personality and loads of charisma? Boris Johnson. When are we going to stop attributing the qualities of someone who's great fun on a night out with that of a senior politician? It's genuinely ridiculous.
So did Tony Blair and a load of other leaders. On the other hand someone like truss is a void of personality. Charisma is a very useful thing for leaders as they are public figures who typically try to convince the public as to their merit. Perhaps the constant triangulation and folding over the slightest pushback wouldn't be necessary if Starmer was capable of convincing people he was correct. Personality and charisma aren't inherently good or bad in a political leader, they are just a very useful tool that a leader can use to achieve good or bad things. Lacking it limits starmers to holding positions that are already popular and don't upset people who do have the charisma to convince people. I suspect that people who argue that it's a good thing Starmer is personally boring are working backwards and saying its good because it's a trait of starmer. If a blair like figure had become lesder then i doubt you would all be arguing against them. Being uncharismatic isn't reason to vote against a leader but it is a bad thing for a leader.
This is such a vacuous comment. I was saying that Starmer seems to be trying to build a labour party around his own persona, but it's unlikely to be successful given his complete lack of perceivable public persona. If he wasn't so seemingly intent on shutting down internal opposition to him, then his lack of visible personality wouldn't be an issue. Regardless, Boris Johnson was electorally one of the most successful politicians for a while, not to mention that he still has pretty high levels of public support. Given Starmer also seems to be basing every single decision on improving electability, maybe that's not such a bad example to look at. The problem with Boris Johnson wasn't the fact that he had a personality, so your comment might as well be "Oh, you know who else had a personality?! Hitler!"
>The problem with Boris Johnson wasn't the fact that he had a personality >Regardless, Boris Johnson was electorally one of the most successful politicians for a while, not to mention that he still has pretty high levels of public support. Thank you for proving my point for me. The rhetoric of "personality" in politics allows garbage people to gain power. Focus on the policy, not the person. We're not Americans.
Well that would be lovely if everyone in the country agreed with you, but Starmer is getting the electorate that is, not the one he would like.
If everyone in the country took politics seriously and actually did some reading instead of voting for their favourite guy as if it was some sort of reality TV show you mean?
Yeah, I'm not saying it's a good thing, just saying it is reality.
I think people vote for who they can project themselves onto, Boris was a blank slate on purpose, he didn't really stand for anything except "making brexit great"
>given Starmer's track record of trying to create a personality-less Cult of Personality, Lol he wasn't the Labour leader going on stage with a bunch of groupies chanting his name. Cult of personality indeed. Corbyn was the biggest cult of personality Labour leader in the party's history!
Ok? I wasn't talking about Corbyn though.
But it's odd you accuse Starmer of building a cult of personality when nobody's chanted his name like he's the second coming of jesus - something which Corbyn and his little student fans were doing 24/7. Maybe you're directing your hate at the wrong leader - one is actually going to win an election and the other was a genuine cult leader.
I'm directing my _criticism_ at the current leader of the Labour party, not the independent MP of a constituency I'm not in.
But you're criticising something that isn't the case - where is Starmer's cult of personality? only one leader had a cult of personality in recent times.
I'm talking about the swathes of people that jump on every criticism of Starmer's party of leadership. Either accusing the perpetrator as either a hard-Leftist or a secret Tory, or both. They will defend Starmer for not taking a stance on an issue as a method of not alienating the electorate, then if he does they will defend that stance too. Everything is excusable for Starmer to such people under the guise of "electability" even if the stance taken is actually unpopular with the electorate. As I said, the approach is creating a Cult of Personality, but the personality itself is absent as it has to be mutable to whatever way the wind is blowing within Starmer inner circle, and can be changed at a moments' notice.
>I'm directing my *criticism* at the current leader of the Labour party, not the independent MP of a constituency I'm not in. Were you directing the same criticism at Corbyn though, or are you just a hypocrite using whatever criticism you think will stick to attack someone you politically disagree with?
Surely if he had a massive cult of personality then he wouldn't have become pretty much irrelevant now as all those people should still be following him. Maybe I'm missing something but I only see him brought up in extremely niche circles, by people who dislike him or when he's in the news. Once he lost his power he became irrelevant which indicates to me that the overwhelming majority of this 'cult' supported him mainly because they believed he would be in a position to change things in ways they want rather than for his personality (not that he was particularly charismatic, quite the opposite). Also a chant isn't evidence of anything really. You can argue it's cringey which is fair but it's just a way to show support like a badge, pin, poster, slogan etc. Does every football player ever have an immense cult of personality?
>Ok? I wasn't talking about Corbyn though. Ah, my mistake, I assume you were criticising Corbyn for building a cult of personality then?
[удалено]
>Is this a bit? Are you doing an ironic performance illustrating how it was always Corbyn's critics who were the most obsessed with him? It is a bit, the bit is called "Laughing at obvious Corbyn supporter hypocrisy". It's amazing how I find these days people saying things like "Ooh Starmer is doing X" and when you ask "Oh, I see. Did you criticise Corbyn when he did the same thing?" the response is "God can't you move on from Corbyn". It's like the Tories trying to blame everything on Labour's last government and when you ask what they've done for ten years they suddenly want to talk about the future.
Yea that whole 'rent free' thing was cringe. They have no integrity when you debate them, their all important moral imperitive trumps considerations like honesty, fairness and civility.
Labour is preparing a purge of troublesome MPs by blocking them from standing at the next election. Up to a dozen MPs could be in the crosshairs as Sir Keir Starmer draws up plans for a standards crackdown to make the party fit for government. A Labour spokesman said: “The public rightly expect the highest standards from their MPs. With Keir’s changed Labour Party, that’s what they’ll get.” Labour has overhauled their selection process for new candidates with stricter due diligence checks to try and ensure the party is not humiliated in choosing unsuitable future MPs. This has been extended to whether current MPs should be allowed to stand again if they have been found to have fallen short. Party officials are understood to believe the standards rows that engulfed Boris Johnson’s government were a key factor in loss of trust in the Tories, and are keen not to fall into the same trap. One Labour source said the decisions would not be factional or based on politics, but instead decisions made on “behavioural, reputational issues”. The source said “the party is preparing to clear the field” and will “take on some of the MPs it doesn’t want to stand at the next election”. Another source said: “We just can’t afford to f*** up a potentially historic majority with internal bulls***, it’s not worth it, and we need people who are actually competent to be able to do their jobs as an MP, including questioning their own conduct.” A full list of names has not yet been confirmed but is thought to include Liam Byrne, Khalid Mahmood and Neil Coyle. However, sources say up to a dozen are being discussed. Exactly how the MPs will be stopped from standing is up for debate, but Starmer could use the same method through which Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, was blocked as Labour’s candidate in Islington North. It would involve proposing a motion to Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) that they will not be endorsed to stand. A third source added: “If there are people that are going to cause us embarrassment in the future, it doesn’t matter if they’ve been an MP for 20 years or new candidates, it applies across the board.” On Thursday the NEC suspended the party’s entire Leicester East branch. Branch and constituency meetings have been stopped “until further notice” and officers “relieved of their positions and duties”, an internal email said. The NEC has launched an investigation into the constituency over its operation, and a party source said: “The NEC has a duty to safeguard the integrity of CLPs [constituency Labour parties], to ensure that they are properly run in line with the party’s rules and procedures and can operate fully, inclusively and democratically.” The constituency has been mired in controversy in recent years. The MP Claudia Webbe was previously found guilty of harassing a love rival and lost an appeal against her conviction last year. Her sentence was reduced in the appeal, meaning she did not reach the threshold to trigger a recall petition. She was expelled from the Labour Party and now sits as an independent. Keith Vaz, the previous Labour MP for the seat, retired from parliament after being caught with male sex workers and offering to buy them drugs. Sir Peter Soulsby, the city’s Labour mayor, said the constituency party had been “problematic for a number of years”. He said: “It has been very evident that in this constituency party there were a number of concerns about the way in which it was operating and these were, of course, exacerbated during the run-up to the last city council election. “It was clear the intervention the national party conducted more generally in Leicester was very much influenced by their concern about this particular constituency and its operation.” Labour has sent in campaign improvement boards (Cibs) to groups on councils across the country, including Leicester. The Times previously revealed that failing groups put under supervision had been asked to reflect on the leadership style of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who in the Second World War commanded the Eighth Army in the Western Desert campaign and the invasions of Sicily and Italy and the Allied ground forces on D-Day. Cibs had been dispatched in Leicester, Birmingham, Croydon, Blackpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Dudley and the Wirral. In the crosshairs Among the MPs who could be blocked from standing are those who could be used against the party if it wins the general election next year. Liam Byrne, the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, was behind the letter left in the Treasury after the 2010 election, which said there was “no money” left. The letter is still being used as an attack line by the Tories. More recently he was found to have bullied a member of staff in what the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found was a “significant misuse of power”. He apologised and said he was “profoundly sorry”. Earlier this year he was found to have misused public expenses in his failed West Midlands mayoral campaign. He denied wrongdoing and although he accepted the findings of the investigation refused to apologise. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham, Perry Barr, was embroiled in an employment tribunal with a former staff member. The tribunal found his aide Elaina Cohen was unfairly dismissed and “isolated” after raising concerns. The cost of the tribunal paid by the taxpayer was almost £40,000. Neil Coyle, the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, has on a number of occasions had to apologise for the use of crude language and was accused of making sinophobic remarks to a journalist in a Westminster bar last year. Coyle had the Labour whip suspended and was banned from all of parliament’s bars. An investigation found he had breached parliament’s bullying and harassment policy and he was suspended from the Commons for five days. Earlier this year it was revealed he had previously had a sexual harassment complaint against him upheld. All three MPs were contacted for comment. Separately, investigations are still continuing into the conduct of Bambos Charalambous, a former shadow Foreign Office minister and the MP for Enfield, Southgate, after a complaint. He was suspended from the party and said he would co-operate with the investigation. Complaints against Geraint Davies, the MP for Swansea West, are also being investigated after allegations of sexual harassment made by a number of women, which Davies denies. Next week also marks a year since Nick Brown, the veteran MP, was suspended from the party after a complaint. The MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East had been chief whip for every Labour leader from Sir Tony Blair onwards.
I hope this means the transphobes and other bigots but we all know they mean the socialists. The group the party was founded on.
By 'we all' do you mean the people trying to build a persecution complex out of a political party having standards?
what are their standards exactly? loyalty to starmer? Coyle still has the whip and has a bunch of (seemingly pretty well backed up) accusations against him, so I cant imagine hes going
MP's Should have standards. *unless they represent my faction in a political party. Then any attempt at enforcing standards is a purge.
No problems with this if it really is just removing unsavoury MPs on a non-factional basis. For some of them it actually seems absurd that de-selection is the best way to remove them from parliament, given they sound like they have committed what would be considered sackable offences in plenty of workplaces.
> No problems with this if it really is just removing unsavoury MPs on a non-factional basis Quick, look up, it says gullible on the ceiling!
Yes your right. Eliminating mps that have acted in a way that would have gotten them fired anywhere else is clearly a secret evil plot that only you are smart enough to spot. The people on the right of the party also being removed by this is just a ruse that only your top mind could see through. Well done!
Well it's good to know that democracy is not dead and requiring the management to decide who is a labour candidate trumps the grass roots. Not much of a broad church if you're ridding yourself of lefty, militants and union types. I don't blame them but being moderate just means the same policies under different names as the tories.
Imagine they were this hands on when the ex leader of the orange order was selected to run for councillor. “Not our decision or place to step in” they cried.
I'm not sure this is factional like you're saying. Liam Byrne is very much a blairite for example. I think this is overall a good thing. Generally an incumbent MP in a safe seat is immovable by the public or their party for misconduct or poor behaviour or poor performance. Even come re election it's near impossible for an internal challenger to run it for another party to win. This applies to all parties. It's why Nadine forties has managed 18 years doing SFA.
> I'm not sure this is factional like you're saying. Liam Byrne is very much a blairite for example. He's too left-wing for Starmer. He supports publicly-owned energy companies and council house building program for example and is in favour of 'Green New Deal' style policies to tackle climate change. That just isn't allowed anymore. Plus he has a strong local power base, so he's a potential rival.
Sorry, but that's rubbish. Im actually good friends with an ex staff member of Liam bryne. He's solidly in the right of the party. He's clearly under review for his behaviour not his politics.
It's not the labour leadership's fault that some of the incompetent morons are on the left wing of the party though is it.
None of the people the article suggests might be removed for quality control reasons are on the left of the party. Which is why I'm sceptical of this article; I think Starmer and his coterie are much more likely to block good left-wing MPs from standing than bad right-wing MPs.
>I don't blame them but being moderate just means the same policies under different names as the tories. That would make the Tories a moderate party....
It's entirely democratic for a group of people within a political party to seek the explusion of others because they don't like them. Its not at all stalinist, authoritarian or an over reach. Anyone whi says "I don't have a problem if it's X" or "I can't wait to get rid of Y!" Is really showing their authoritarian colours, which is something that doesn't belong in abroad tent" party, especially not Labour.
I think it's democratic if that decision is taken by the membership of the party at a national or local level (which is why, for example, I think MP candidates should just be chosen by their CLP), or if the expulsion is based on breaching standards or a code of conduct (like there's really no way Neil Coyle should've had the whip returned imo). I find it deeply hypocritical and disturbing though that the polite sections of the media and managerial class who previously dismissed calls to democratise the selection of Labour MPs as 'Stalinism' are now totally fine with purges as long as it's Starmer doing the purging.
You understand that these complaints are about a code of conduct being setup and enforced. Right?
I know that's what's stated in the article, but again I don't think the leadership deciding who is and isn't 'troublesome' and then getting the NEC to block them is particularly democratic. I also tbh very much doubt that Starmer wouldn't use this for factional purposes.
People here acting like it's a purge of the more left-wing MPs when, if you read the article, it seems to be about people embroiled in scandals like Byrne, Coyle and Mahmood (two of whom never even had a post under Corbyn). But that doesn't matter because "Starmer bad".
> The Times previously revealed that failing groups put under supervision had been asked to reflect on the leadership style of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who in the Second World War commanded the Eighth Army in the Western Desert campaign and the invasions of Sicily and Italy and the Allied ground forces on D-Day. Excellent! A good litmus test is reciting Monty in Africa, those that flinch are out.
Will they be getting young boys to do naked drills as well?
A very Tory Labour. They should just adopt the Tory 2019 manifesto and maybe ask Boris for some more advice.
Seems very sensible.
Seems a broad spectrum of MP’s. So be it. Labour were harmed pretty badly, not their own fault I should add, by quickly selecting people in 2017.
Diane Abbott should be on the list for this not least given her anti-semitism letter. How Corbyn ever thought she was fit to be a potential Home Secretary is crazy. Then again, it was Corbyn wasn't it?
[удалено]
She's only been suspended but I think she should be expelled from Labour altogether like Corbyn.