Sunday 14 May 2023

The Biggest Bellyachers in Politics

The biggest moaners in politics are members of the Conservative Party. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's a Eurovision entrant who once said uncomplimentary things about their government, students objecting to bigots using their campuses to peddle hate, or the BBC breaking with tradition and running a factual support about how X leading politician has been enriched by a coincidental by-product of a policy, a senior backbencher, a minister, or a national newspaper will fulminate and cast the Tory juggernaut as the poor little victim of bullying. For tetchyness and thin-skinned overreactions, the most rigid of Trotskyist groups have nothing on the Tories. This in mind, the weekend's conference of the Conservative Democratic Organisation was always going to be a whinge fest of the highest order.

Who are the CDO? Are they an organisation founded to address the party's yawning democracy gap? Don't be silly. Readers familiar with the utterly fascinating topic of the Conservative Party's constitution will know that meaningful power resides in the party leader. Members are "consulted" about policy at their occasional forums, but they have no effective determination over the party's political direction. I suppose in this sense the Tories are more honest than the Labour Party, which takes motions at conference but its resolutions are routinely ignored by the party leadership. Apart from this Tory members get to vote in the leadership contests, vote in their local Association officers and, lastly, select their candidates at election time. The democracy the CDO is "campaigning" for, according to its statement of aims, is the election of more party officers and the protection of Associations' rights to select their MP, and deselect them if necessary. Note the idea members should steer the party politically is not even entertained.

I use the term "campaigning" loosely because internal reform is but a fig leaf. The CDO is basically the Boris Johnson fan club, draped in the finery of principled party democracy. The CDO argues that the election of Rishi Sunak was an anti-democratic outrage, which is true enough. But, strangely, their concerns for the niceties of democracy were nowhere to be seen when Johnson was flouting every constitutional norm going, nor when he tabled the legislation that introduced compulsory voter ID and the constituency boundary gerrymanders. Another uncanny coincidence: the CDO's leading figures are all noted Johnson cronies. The chair, Peter Cruddas, was given a peerage after donating £3m to the Tories over many years. Coincidentally, that was upped by a further half million once he received his ermine. Also on board are the gruesome twosome of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries, and former Home Secretary Priti Patel. You might recall she made a pointed show of refusing to resign when the knives finally came out for Johnson, and retired from the cabinet just before Liz Truss paid Downing Street her flying visit. The reason for their conference being a whinge-fest then isn't hard to fathom: it's led by people who have been out of sorts since Johnson's heave-ho. The CDO is nothing but an organised grievance.

Consider Patel's speech. No more coyness and shilly-shallying. The electoral drubbing of the previous week was blamed on "centrists". I.e. Sunak. Things would have been so much different had they spent more time "with us", and a thousand councillors would have been spared the consequences of "bad decisions" at Westminster. Unnamed "colleagues" also get it in the neck for doing "a better job at damaging our party than the opposition, left wing campaign groups, civil service blob, and our enemies in the media combined." The drone and moan carried on with Cruddas's address. He attacked Sunak for moving the Tories in the direction of "a centre-left or social democratic party". Only someone whose view of social life is obscured by mountains of money could believe such rubbish. He attacked Tory MPs who had gone behind Johnson's back and colluded with each other in "secret meetings", which is something his hero definitely never did under any of his predecessors. Cruddas also warned that Labour were on course to win an election and would lock the Tories out of power "forever". Their underhanded means of doing involves enfranchising 16 and 17 year-olds, reversing voter ID, and introducing proportional representation.

To think some people spent good money travelling from one end of the country to the other to bathe in a day of bloviating and complaining. But among the grumbles against briefcase Toryism, a nugget of interest. Despite heaping praise on her former boss, Patel came to bury him with platitudes. Asked about the chances of a Johnson comeback, she said "I don't think that's going to do us the world of good at all." Indeed not as, by the time of his removal, he had become toxic and the Tories languished between 11 and 14 points behind in nearly all the polls. That at least suggests Patel has a foot in political realities, unlike some drawn behind the Johnson train. Fortunately for her, this ruling out of a return hasn't provoked a reaction from the CDO faithful. Perhaps some of them are cottoning on to their idol being yesterday's man. But, as it happens, there is someone with a demonstrable track record of Johnson loyalty and a policy pedigree of right wing cruelty that tickles the Tory underbelly. The Tories like a good whinge, as Cruddas and Patel remind us, but in this instance their performative snowflakery has a purpose: to make certain their take over of the Tory party after the coming, inevitable defeat.

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11 comments:

David Lindsay said...

While Keir Starmer was boring the paint off the walls, Priti Patel, Home Secretary throughout the lockdowns, was banging the drum for Johnson, the Prime Minister of Stonewall, of Net Zero, of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and of the war in Ukraine. As well as of the lockdowns, of course. Well, the first such Prime Minister, anyway. Both of his successors were in the Cabinet through all of that, and have therefore represented no change from it. Like Patel. Or like the other two star turns at the same shindig, Nadine Dorries of the "legal but harmful" clause, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons on every day of the Johnson Premiership.

Rees-Mogg will also be addressing the forthcoming National Conservative conference. Along with the father of the present state-funded education system in England, and along with the woman who was not stopping the boats. Like the attendees at each of Saturday's functions, the attendees at that will be speaking only to themselves. It is Labour and the Liberal Democrats who have just made gains from the Conservatives, while left-wingers who had been expelled from the Labour Party stormed home, while the SDP doubled its municipal base, and while the Greens ended the night with far more Councillors than UKIP had ever had, largely in what had been true blue areas.

Meanwhile, no Reform candidate was elected this time, of around 400 who had been fielded, and UKIP lost its half a dozen remaining seats. All of 23 MPs who had been elected as Conservatives voted against the Windsor Framework, although even one of those had already lost the whip, he has since been kicked out of the party altogether, and he has just joined a party on the outermost fringe. The remaining 22 are the conventionally defined Right's absolute maximum, with a core that is no more than half that size, little or none of which will be permitted to contest the next General Election in the Conservative interest.

Douglas Carswell held his seat at a by-election before the Conservatives won it back, but no one else since the War has been elected to the House of Commons against the Conservative Party and explicitly from its right. It is possible that at a General Election, no one ever has been. Certainly, no one will be next year. Contrast that with the racing certainty that Jeremy Corbyn is going to take the 20,000 votes necessary to be the First Past the Post at Islington North, putting him in the hung Parliament of 2024.

When I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And I say again that on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

BudapestBounce said...

...students objecting to bigots using their campuses to peddle hate...

That's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is "misguided cry-bully students throwing tantrums about challenges to their misogynistic ideology". Kathleen Stock is a very mild-mannered lesbian philosopher raising important questions around transgenderism. If she is a bigot peddling hate, what does that make Suella "Stop the Invasion" Braverman?

"On the 21st April 2023, the Oxford Union released its termcard for Trinity Term 2023, containing an invitation for philosopher Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The invitation was met with near-instant condemnation by multiple LGBTQ+ students, welfare societies, and advocacy groups affiliated with the University of Oxford."

It may turn out that it's the Tories who are on the right side of history in terms of transgenderism, not (most of) the Labour party.

David Parry said...

BudapestBounce

'Another way of putting it is "misguided cry-bully students throwing tantrums about challenges to their misogynistic ideology".'

The 'misogynistic ideology' of treating trans people with dignity and respect, yes.

'Kathleen Stock is a very mild-mannered lesbian philosopher raising important questions around transgenderism.'

Well, to use your phrase, that's one way of putting it. Another is that she is a wolf in sheep's clothing who seeks to disguise her transphobia behind a facade of reasonableness and moderation. She basically is to the movement of feminist-identifying transphobes as someone like Warren Farrell is to the soi disant 'men's rights' movement, a somewhat public figure whose function is to give a sanitised veneer to what is fundamentally a hate movement. Also, her being a lesbian no more exempts her from criticism for her transphobia than Suella Braverman's ethnicity lets Braverman off the hook for her rank xenophobia and barbaric treatment of asylum seekers!

'If she is a bigot peddling hate, what does that make Suella "Stop the Invasion" Braverman?'

A bigot who is explicit about her bigotry instead of hiding behind superficial niceties?

'It may turn out that it's the Tories who are on the right side of history in terms of transgenderism, not (most of) the Labour party.'

Those who contribute to the oppression of marginalised groups are never on the right side of history!

Anonymous said...

BudapestBounce

Tell us all about your personal agenda, eh...?

Not to mention the nature of the rock that you've been dwelling under.

"students objecting to bigots using their campuses to peddle hate" has applied to quite a lot of situations over the last decade.

BudapestBounce said...

...the 'misogynistic ideology' of treating trans people with dignity and respect, yes...

Can you give an example of "TERFs" like Stock and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (the crypto-fascist who wrote H*rry P*tt*r) failing to treat trans people with dignity and respect? Disagreeing with all claims made by trans people doesn't count, I'm afraid.

...Another is that she is a wolf in sheep's clothing who seeks to disguise her transphobia behind a facade of reasonableness and moderation...

Yes, just like She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. TERFS work for transgenocide by fully supporting the civil rights of trans people and condemning all violence against trans people. Such cunning! Meanwhile, trans-critics like Stock face violence, intimidation, a constant stream of rape and death threats, and public declarations like "DECAPITATE TERFs".

...A bigot who is explicit about her bigotry instead of hiding behind superficial niceties?...

But Stock is explicit about her "bigotry". She doesn't believe that the feelings of trans people overturn biology or justify the dismantling of women's hard-earned sex-based rights. She and her fellow TERFs put forward arguments that their opponents obviously can't defeat. Otherwise the anti-TERFs wouldn't use censorship, intimidation and violence against them.

...Those who contribute to the oppression of marginalised groups are never on the right side of history!...

I fully agree. But who is the marginalised group here? It isn't trans people who are being driven out of their jobs for disagreeing with TERFs, is it? It isn't trans people who are being asked to share private spaces and prisons with transphobes.

...Tell us all about your personal agenda, eh?...

My personal agenda is to argue with civility and respect for what I think is the truth.

...Not to mention the nature of the rock that you've been dwelling under...

Ah, I disagree with you, so I'm a lower life-form, dwelling under a rock. Maybe I should be decapitated? Or would I merely grow another head and crawl off to spread more hate?

Blissex said...

«the utterly fascinating topic of the Conservative Party's constitution will know that meaningful power resides in the party leader.»

You have written a book about the Conservative and [Liberal] Unionist Party, and I haven't, but IIRC only MPs can be members of that Party, it is a strictly parliamentary party, and this distinction matters to your argument.

«Members are "consulted" about policy at their occasional forums, but they have no effective determination over the party's political direction.»

IIRC those you call "members" are actually subscribers of local supporter associations (or "clubs") of the parliamentary party. CCHQ/CCO is actually the federation of those local supporter association, and is not a party. The chairman of the CCHQ is just the president of that federation.

IIRC the only points of overlaps between the local associations and the party are that the local associations select (and reselect) candidates for party membership (that is, candidates for election to the parliamentary party), and the leader of the party is chosen by local association subscribers among a selection made by party members (Conservative and [Liberal] Unionist MPs).

Labour is completely different of course, it is a mass movement and party, and the PLP is just a subset of the general membership of the party, the delegation of the party to Parliament.

David Parry said...

BudapestBounce

'Can you give an example of "TERFs" like Stock and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (the crypto-fascist who wrote H*rry P*tt*r) failing to treat trans people with dignity and respect?'

JK Rowling followed on Twitter and spoke very fondly of Magdalen Berns, who, in addition to peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories around George Soros, once described trans women as 'blackface actors' who 'get sexual kicks from being treated as women', accusing them of treating women's oppression as a 'fetish' and attacking them for their 'perversions'. On what planet is endorsing such hateful nonsense compatible with trans people with dignity and respect?

'Yes, just like She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. TERFS work for transgenocide by fully supporting the civil rights of trans people'

'Fully supporting the civil rights of trans people' by demanding that trans youth with body-related gender dysphoria be stripped of access to the healthcare that they need, fearmongering about trans women's participating in women's sports, and trying to witch-hunt them out of women's spaces, yes.

'But Stock is explicit about her "bigotry".'

What I mean is that she won't frame the very existence of trans people as an attack on women (at least not explicitly). She won't reduce the very existence of trans women to a sexual fetish (based on Ray Blanchard's discredited nonsense about autogynephilia, which survives only as a means of denigrating and dehumanising trans women) or compare trans women to flashers or people who want to molest children, unlike others in the feminist-identifying transphobe movement (cough, cough, Sheila Jeffreys, cough, cough). She'll even claim that she has no interest in excluding 'passing' trans women from women's spaces, despite having added her signatory to a statement by the feminist-identifying transphobe organisation Women's Declaration International demanding a blanket ban on trans women entering women's spaces. Fundamentally, though, the thrust of her message is no different from that of Jeffrey's, namely that trans rights are a threat to (cis) women's rights that must be neutralised.

'She and her fellow TERFs put forward arguments that their opponents obviously can't defeat. Otherwise the anti-TERFs wouldn't use censorship, intimidation and violence against them.'

Would you apply this same logic to Holocaust deniers?

'It isn't trans people who are being driven out of their jobs for disagreeing with TERFs, is it?'

If by 'driven from their jobs', you mean being driven from prestigious posts that involve them influencing public opinion, then this is true enough, though this is because trans people occupying those posts are vanishingly few and far between to begin with. As Owen Jones puts it, you can't 'cancel' a trans newpaper columnist because, by and large, they don't exist.

'It isn't trans people who are being asked to share private spaces and prisons with transphobes.'

Trans women are at risk of physical violence from the transphobic men that you want to force them to share public toilets and prisons with, especially in the case of prisons. That's on top of all the abuse, ostracism, discrimination and violence trans people face more generally simply for existing. But yeah, the people responsible for all of that are the marginalised ones!

Fucking pillock!

'Ah, I disagree with you, so I'm a lower life-form, dwelling under a rock.'

You're clearly unfamiliar with the idiom 'living under a rock', LOL.

BudapestBounce said...

...Trans women are at risk of physical violence from the transphobic men that you want to force them to share public toilets and prisons with, especially in the case of prisons. That's on top of all the abuse, ostracism, discrimination and violence trans people face more generally simply for existing...

Gay men and autistic men and men of colour and many other kinds of men face violence and prejudice in prison too. Should they all be sent to female prisons? Male prisons are violent places, unfortunately. This is not an argument for sending potential victims of that violence to female prisons.

...But yeah, the people responsible for all of that are the marginalised ones!...

When you leave (or enter) your teens, you'll understand that the world is a complicated place and self-righteous simplicity doesn't work. TERFs aren't responsible for the violence faced by trans women. Cis men are. And "trans women" (in the sense used here) are cis men with a sexual fetish called autogynephilia. That's fine. What's not fine is their demand that reality and women's rights be overturned to pander to their fetish.

...Fucking pillock!...

Ah, the natural charm, wit and good nature of the kind and caring anti-TERF left. Thank you.

...'Ah, I disagree with you, so I'm a lower life-form, dwelling under a rock.' You're clearly unfamiliar with the idiom 'living under a rock', LOL...

LOL. Oh dear. As I said above: when you leave your teens...

David Parry said...

BudapestBounce

'Gay men and autistic men and men of colour and many other kinds of men face violence and prejudice in prison too. Should they all be sent to female prisons?'

1) That's a different kettle of squid.

2) I'm an anarchist and a prison abolitionist, and you're helping to make my case against prisons for me, so ... thanks, I guess.

'When you leave (or enter) your teens, you'll understand that the world is a complicated place and self-righteous simplicity doesn't work.'

I actually left my teens more than a decade ago, but I love to be condescended to by people who really are in no position to do so, so by all means continue in that vein.

'TERFs aren't responsible for the violence faced by trans women. Cis men are.'

Feminist-identifying transphobes might not be directly responsible for violence against trans women (for the most part, anyway), but they are responsible for contributing to the cultural climate that engenders it. Do they bear exclusive responsibility for this? Absolutely not, but they do play role in it, and it's right and proper that they should be held accountable for that role.

'And "trans women" (in the sense used here) are cis men with a sexual fetish called autogynephilia. That's fine. What's not fine is their demand that reality and women's rights be overturned to pander to their fetish.'

This makes zero sense whatsoever. A cis man with autogynephilia (presuming such a thing even exists) is not a trans woman. He is a cis man. Moreover, as far as I'm aware, no such men are making any such demands on account of their sexual fetish. 'Autogynephilic men' only feature in this whole conflict as a figment of the imaginations of the more outwardly unhinged elements within the feminist-identifying transphobe movement, and they're not drawing this distinction between actual trans women and cis men with autogynephilia. They're using the concept to describe all trans women (or at those who are attracted to cis women).

'Oh dear. As I said above: when you leave your teens...'

And as I said above, I love to be condescended to by people who really are in no position to do so.

BudapestBounce said...


David Parry --

...This makes zero sense whatsoever. A cis man with autogynephilia (presuming such a thing even exists) is not a trans woman...

I know it makes zero sense. I was mocking transgenderism, which is a superstitious (and not-so-crypto-misogynistic) cult, not a coherent, scientifically grounded ideology like my own neo-Marxist materialism (with post-Foucauldian trimmings). Transwoman are not women, but "cis" men with various kinds of issues. Autogynephilia, for one. Narcissistic rage, for another. I'm sorry you've fallen for the cult, but the way you've also fallen for my teasing about "teens" suggests to me that... But I'll refrain from saying it.

Btw, did you catch that story about poor marginalised Amy George? You know, the Scottish transwoman who selflessly took a schoolgirl home, warmed the hypothermic mite in her own bed and played her some soothing porn videos? Then -- OMG! -- the transphobic infant ingrate called the police! And they ARRESTED poor marginalised Amy in some no doubt very fetching silicone breasts (I mean Amy had the breasts, not the police). Amy will NOT be going to a female prison. She should, of course. She's 100% woman, after all. (Silicone aside.)

Some would say that poor marginalised Amy is a classic example of the validity of autogynephilia. In terms of issues around those haters, I say: Burn the witches! Burn them!

I'm sorry, that's so sixteenth century. Let's try again:

Decapitate the TERFs! Decapitate them!

Anyway, I'd like to response to all your pro-trans spiel, but you know how it is. Stockpiling Zyklon B, studying gas-chamber plans, generally preparing for the glorious dawn of the R*wl*ng Reich -- a transphobe's work is never done!

That said... I really do need to beg you to recalibrate your moral compass in terms of your attempt to link TERFs with Holocaust deniers. Clearly, on all objective ethical and epistemological critera, there can be absolutely no equivalence between the two groups. TERFs are far worse. All the same, I think even TERFs should be allowed to argue their case without violence and censorship.

As for "trans youth with body-related gender dysphoria" and "the healthcare that they need". I don't think "healthcare" is a good description of the medicalised (and highly profitable) crimes being committed against some young people who need therapy and sympathy, not surgery or drugs. This will become increasingly apparent even to folk such as yourself. I hope (imagine me crossing my transphobic fingers now).

David Parry said...

BudapestBounce,

Just consider yourself lucky that we're not in meatspace- I'd put you in casualty faster than you could say 'Sheila Jeffreys'!

Phil,

Could you ban this unhinged transphobic shitcunt from posting any further?