Instead of answering he burbled
Darn it it’s so hard to convince everyone that you’re not the baddy when your target will insist on talking herself. Joan Smith deeply sympathizes.
If you want to see a human being squirm, just say the words “Rosie Duffield” to Sir Keir Starmer. He immediately looks like a man who wishes he was somewhere else — at the dentist, maybe, or having an intimate medical procedure. It happened again this morning, when he was asked by Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain whether he was going to apologise to the Canterbury MP after finally admitting she was correct to say in 2021 that only women have a cervix.
Instead of answering he burbled about how well he and Rosie get along and how they “discuss a number of issues.”
This is not how Duffield sees it. She says Starmer hasn’t spoken to her for two-and-a-half years, and it’s not for want of trying on her part. Her efforts to talk to him about the bullying she’s endured from party members (and indeed anything else) have come to nothing, as she revealed in an article earlier this month.
Welp if Starmer hasn’t spoken to her in 2.5 years then it looks as if he’s telling a whopper when he says they chat about them there issues.
“Have I heard a word from [Starmer]? Or from senior colleagues?” she wrote. “No!” She added that the party leader has “almost no personal contact with his backbenchers. The last message I sent to Keir, practically begging for support, was ignored.”
Brave Sir Robin ran away.
A decent man would throw up his hands and admit he was wrong. Instead, Starmer takes refuge in platitudes — but they’re dangerous platitudes. He says he talks to Duffield. She says he doesn’t. He says he wants to have a discussion with her and “anybody else” about sex and gender. So why have I been waiting more than three years for a response to my letter on this very issue, which described attacks on women members of the Labour Party by trans activists? He still hasn’t replied after I spoke to him in person at a dinner in May 2022.
So I guess maybe he’s not a decent man?
The take-away message here is that Starmer is still afraid of pissing off trans activists. What else explains the belligerant cowardice that compells him to defend lies like “Some women have penises” and that anyone other than a woman can have a cervix? I find it impossible to believe that he himself believes either of those things, but he must pretend he does, or at least that’s what he’s convinced himself. He is in rainbow glitter stepped in so far, that, should he wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. I’m sure he’d like this all to blow over, but his pandering servility to trans activism is now part of the story. He’s now a hostage, taken in by the reflexive, phony progressivism of gender extremism. It’s not a good look for any elected politician, but even less so in one who leads a political party, because those under him will have a strong motive to follow his terrible example, isolating and ostracizing members like Duffield who are unwilling to spout the bullshit in order to accept the genderists’ toxic blessings.
Obviously Starmer knows that, as far as mch of Labour is concerned, Duffield is an Unperson, and that his reluctance to meet with her is an attempt to stay in the good books with his trans overlords, both inside and outside of the party. He is no longer his own man. Yet some tiny part of his conscience and survival instinct knows this is “bad”, thus the half-hearted lie about being in touch with her to talk about “a number of issues.” If it didn’t trouble him at all, why even mention it? That it doesn’t trouble him enough to follow through is not supposed to be held against him. Apparently we’re supposed to realize how hard and complicated this all is, and sympathize with his attempt to simultaneously ride two horses travelling in opposite directions. Instead it just shows more weakness, more petulance.
To have a whole party (or a sizeable portion of it) enforce adherence to lies that result in harm to half the population (i.e. women and girls) in order to appease a clique of noisy, social media extremists does nothing to advance the cause of democracy. It is its antithesis. These trans extremists they’re trying to please will reward Labour by demanding more concessions rather than fewer. There’s a reason that making deals with kidnappers and terrorists is generally considered to be a Bad Idea. That Starmer and his devotees cannot see this shows just how out of touch they all are, and how unsuited they are to govern.
Ok, but if that were actually true why would Labour be 20 points ahead? If you want to retort that the Tories really suck then I can’t refute it but this really is an issue that looks large for activists but seems to be background noise for most everyone else (that’s even somewhat true in the States). It’ll probably be more salient when Starmer is PM but now it’s all about getting the seats.
Excellent Macbeth reference.
Yeah, that Shakepeare guy gets in a good line now and then. He’s almost as quotable as Python.
Point taken. Alas, being out of touch (with reality), and unsuited to govern (because of opportunistic dishonesty) doesn’t prevent parties (or individuals, coughTRUMPcough) from being elected. All the nominally leftish parties in Canada are well and truly captured, so I’ll be holding my nose come election time.
It certainly doesn’t bode well for what Labour might be willing to do once it’s in power (or trying to retain it).