A belated Happy New Year to anyone who reads this. It's going to be enough bad one for most of us, and especially those outside the majoritarian group, as the ruling class will continue to abuse minority communities as the distraction they need for the masses to not notice their quality of life continue to go downwards, along with the continuing economic and environmental collapse, steadfastly driven by those in power to extract even more wealth out of and away from the majority of us.
In that light, I wanted to belatedly respond to Patrick Strudwick's piece in the i, published on December 31st, 2023, titled "Inside the 2023 Tory war on LGBT rights".
If you know from my previous blogs, and posts on Twitter/X (urgh), Mastodon and now Bluesky, you can probably already guess that after reading it, I have some opinions on it. The article interviews both politicians and also political strategists. And I will highlight some parts I dispute below. Please go ahead and read the archive of the article I attached above, to make up your own mind.
After a long preamble on the background to 2023s (and it goes back a few more years too) attacks on LGBTQ+ people by both Conservative politicians, but also their media ecosystem (both legacy and social, with its legions of newly promoted pundits), it is remarkable that despite interviewing two Labour MPs, it comes to Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington in Greater London, Elliot Colburn, to accurately identify where this all is coming from: "The roots of this wind change are wider, he said, partly emerging in concert with well-funded American religious right organisations who have championed anti-LGBT causes in recent years – and echoed by the Russian government."
Of course, Colburn doesn't fully put that as the cause - because 'moderate' conservatives will still always end up falling into line with the Right (as long as they're seen as 'within the boundaries' of civility) - even though it's been obvious where it has all come from, for to me and others who are affected, years, but even in the mainstream press it was spelled out early in 2023 when Ron DeSantis had his full front page 'exclusive interview' with The Telegraph. In the interview, he says of Kemi Badenoch (current anti-LGBTQ+ 'Equalities' Minister): "She (Badenoch) complimented what we are doing in Florida. She committed that it is what they are trying to do in Britain. She pointed out, and I think it’s true, that some of the woke has been exported from the United States... I commend her and her efforts to make sure that this is not corrupting British society." And as we know from even back in Boris Johnson's horrific tenure as Prime Minister, that advocating for rights as an LGBTQ+ person is 'woke' (which it is) and therefore bad, and those groups doing it should be singled out and targeted.
Now it is entirely possible that both Labour MPs - Kate Osborne and Sarah Chapman - also brought it up and Strudwick cut it for space and repetition, but it would also be unsurprising if they were to be avoiding mentioning it, not only because of the lurch to the right of the current Labour Party under Keir Starmer, but because the political class will do what their fellow members in the ruling class - the media class, and most importantly, the capitalist class, want them to do, or else lose their small hold of power they have been allowed to wield in this system. But either way, if we're not going to mention the people and groups that have brought this 'Tory war on LGBT rights' into being, then we're either indirectly or deliberately, permitting the 'war' to continue unopposed.
Leading on from this, I dispute further Robert Colvile's - "one of the authors of the 2019 Conservative Manifesto" - stated belief that this war is not "strategic" (it very much is, as DeSantis made clear in that April interview above), or the belief in there even being "a change in the Tory party". There has been plenty of gaslighting into people's previously held 'beliefs' and 'values' by the ruling class since 2020, to avoid the consequences of their continued deliberate decline of the proletarian class's living standards, and this is one of them.
He says any change has arisen from "genuine" and "heartfelt" concerns around accommodating trans people into society. Not that anyone mentioned it (except the loony ghouls in right-wing social media) being any issue between 2010, when the Equality Act was ratified, and 2019. Because in 2020, to avoid the social upheaval of the botched COVID-19 pandemic response by most governments, and the authoritarian state of our societies that caused the explosion in the Black Lives Matter movement into police violence, and the conversations that followed into other inherent biases of socioeconomic systems and the structure under-pinning it, the right-wing 'think tanks' based out of America, needed to find new vectors of attack, or their whole ideology was under threat of never being heard of again.
In October 2017, former Tory PM Theresa May, re-affirmed her desire to bring forward a form of self-ID for transgender people, to eliminate the required medication of a person, to 'permit' a trans person within our societal system. During her time as Equalities Minister under May, Penny Mordaunt stood at the dispatch box in the Commons, to affirm that "trans women are women and trans men are men". Post-2020, she then abruptly threw trans people under the bus during her failed leadership campaign, and went along with the rhetoric produced in those 'think tanks'. Because to 'politicians', power (however limited) is much more important than consistent values and actually helping their constituents, not hurting them. So yes, the Tories have clearly vaulted to the Right, and now most of their politicians and their media, just parrot invented talking points, and gaslight you into believing that what happened in 2010, didn't, and getting you to disavow the previous beliefs you held.
Is Colvile stupid? Given the quality of those in the current government, along with the 'hangers-on' they employ as advisers, it's entirely plausible. But I think it's more likely he's being stupid on purpose. Because despite what it might feel like, most people don't want to be seen to be harming other people. And even more so once groups have been previously 'accepted' and 'visible' in society. So keep it murky and you can get more people invested into the rhetoric. It's a long-time plan that for some reason continues to work on us. It's a free win.
Further into the article, Strudwick asserts that Conservatives who were willing to participate all agree that current PM, Rishi Sunak, "does not hold strong views or have strong feelings on LGBT issues, neither particularly pro- nor anti-". His voting record would disagree with that on its face, having never voted in favour of LGBTQ+ rights - mostly skipping the vote completely. Indeed of the current cabinet, the vast majority are hostile to us as a whole, and especially to trans people, on a regular basis. Even if that is solely for political expediency, that shows how evil they are and this 'political' system is.
There is then a section on whether the Tories will continue to run heavily on this into the likely election in 2024, and whether it will be effective to do so, and the simple answer I have is 'yes, they will', and 'it doesn't really matter if it is'. Because they have nothing else to offer but distraction. Distraction from all the problems we are all individually and collectively facing, which the political class don't want to tackle, as it would mean overthrowing the social and economic systems that enrich those who have been allowed into the ruling elite. And they make money and political capital from continuing with it. No matter who it devours, and whether that destroys local and global ecosystems.
And if people vote for them anyway - even if they dislike what they are saying - because they 'like' other stuff they're being told by them, or even just because they're pressured into voting that way through familial ties, or just history, then if they win, it doesn't matter. They can do whatever the fuck they want then. It's the same as being done in America already. Hell, over there, the Republicans can ram through anti-LGBTQ+/anti-trans bills (like with abortion or gun rights or attacks on minority groups) at a state level despite being unpopular, because they have already captured the electoral system - and even if they don't on a federal level, they can just use the power of the courts that have also been gerrymandered into their favour anyway. Yet when ballot measures that would be described now by conservatives as 'woke' and 'extreme Leftism' get put up without a political 'side' attached to it (like abortion rights, recreational drug decriminalisation and legalisation, or increases in mandated minimum wage), they overwhelmingly win, even in red states. Yet 'woke' needs to die, as DeSantis used to keep saying, before his own 2024 Presidential bid burned in flames.
Finally, the funniest bit comes at the end of this horrific (not because it's bad, just the violence that is resulting within it) article, when a Government spokesperson tries to defend what they're currently doing to LGBTQ+ people.
"We have a proud history of advancing LGBT rights and one of the most robust legislative protection frameworks for LGBT people in the world. This includes introducing marriage for same-sex couples, passing the Turing Law and backing human rights defenders across the Commonwealth with £2.7m, among other policies." says the spokesperson.
Yet the first two come from pre-2020. The same-sex marriage passage came in 2014, and against the wishes of Conservative members of the Commons (118-127). It only ever happened because the Conservatives didn't win a majority in 2010, and the Liberal Democrats joined in their ill-fated (for them at least) coalition government. Otherwise, we'd likely be one of the worst-off in 'the West' now for LGBTQ+ rights, given the attack that is being co-ordinated now across 'the West' against them. The Turing Law, to give 'amnesty' to those people who were cautioned or convicted of homosexual acts, prior to the dissolution of laws outlawing homosexual acts, was passed in 2017. There have been three different Prime Ministers since then! All of which have gone deeper and deeper into their anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, which has been passed on to them from the 'think tank' and lobby group ecosystem.
The second part though is more pertinent to the current Tory government and Party:
"We are clear that biological sex is fundamentally important to protecting single sex spaces and providing appropriate healthcare, as set out by Ministers."
So yes, sadly, 2024 will be even worse than the past few years have been for us - especially, though not limited to trans people, given 'LGB' people are also having laws passed in US states to include them. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight, as the capitalist class have shown they want this to continue - for the reasons I've listed in this blog. We only have to hope as a society we realise that we're being played like a fiddle, and rise up to stop this insanity that is being played in front of us for diversion. Otherwise, it's 'good game' for us in the very near future.
And I don't hold out much hope of the masses waking the fuck up to all this. They haven't so far, and the system doing all of this to us has lasted many centuries already.
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