I never thought I'd feel so glum about a Labour landslide

the transphobic centrist dads have won and everything sucks

It doesn’t matter how long I spend abroad, I can’t escape the horrifying shadow of British politics. Today is election day, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. A few years ago, I would have been feverishly posting all over socials about the importance of exercising your democratic right to vote and how our votes matter and how change is possible and blah blah blah blah blah. Now it’s 2024 and I can’t even be bothered to pretend like anything matters, especially in a system with no proportional representation.

Poll after poll show a Labour landslide on the horizon, and that voters’ main motivation for voting Labour is to get the Tories out after 14 grim years of austerity, Brexit, and managed decline of everything that we need to stay alive. But let’s not pretend that Labour are going to do anything other than be Tory Lite. Diet Tory. Tory Zero.

carolinelucasbrighton

A post shared by @carolinelucasbrighton

This is one of the many, many problems with a two party system. Political parties cover a broad spectrum: Labour, traditionally, varies from hardcore socialists to fiscally conservative centrists who think poor people shouldn’t starve to death, and Conservatives vary from fiscally conservative centrists who think people should starve to death to actual Nazis. Parties have to appease their more vocal members to stop revolts, splits, and crossing the floor to the other side. This is how Brexit happened, by the way: lunatic far right Tories kicked up a fuss over nothing about the EU, Cameron promised them a referendum to shut them up, and it backfired so spectacularly that me and anyone else with an iota of common sense got the fuck out. I guess I should be grateful for the push abroad that I so desperately needed.

Labour approach to being a broad church is to demonise their MPs who whisper anything vaguely left wing or show a shred of the sort of attributes that Labour was built on - social democracy, standing up for workers, representing ordinary people in society and generally being the antidote to the right wing aristocracy. The shadow of the Corbyn witch hunt hangs over the party and the fear of being branded antisemitic is a carte blanche for Starmer to kick out anyone who dares to say that genocide is bad and that children don’t deserve to have their limbs blown off. This guy used to be a human rights lawyer, by the way.

They’ve now stooped to new lows in bringing in renowned transmisogynist, children’s author, and professional Twitter user J. K. Rowling to “advise” them on “women’s rights”, spouting blatantly transphobic bullshit in order to score cheap points. Give it up, Keir. You’re going to win anyway. You don’t need to try to erase an entire social group to get into Number 10.

Will Labour reopen all the women’s shelters that the Tories closed, allowing women in abusive relationships to safely escape? Of course not. Will they increase maternity (and paternity) leave to allow people to not worry about the cost of having a family? Of course not. Will they close the gender pay gap? Of course not. Will Starmer, a former lawyer, make any effort to ensure sexual assault and rape claims - overwhelmingly those who identify as women being victims of cisgender men - are taken seriously and perpetrators punished? Of course not. Will Labour fight against the criminalisation of abortion and make reproductive care accessible and safe for everyone? Of course not. Will Labour actually try to tackle our permaculture of misogyny, which affects every single aspect of our lives - including those of men? No, they won’t. Because it’s much, much easier to yell at a tiny marginalised group who are just trying to live their lives and yell about who’s allowed to use a toilet than to actually make Britain a better place for those who aren’t white, cisgender, heterosexual men.

As I’ve said before, most notably in my review of iconic queer film But I’m A Cheerleader, what trans exclusionary radical feminists and their supporters are accusing trans people of is exactly the same rhetoric that was levelled at gay men in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s. Eventually everyone will catch up in understanding the complexities and nuances of gender identity, but until then, we can’t just sit here and let our political leaders use trans people as a political football.

Matt Bernstein (@mattxiv) telling it like it is

Until Starmer wheeled out Rowling like the corpse of Jeremy fucking Bentham I was genuinely considering being a nose-pinching Labour voter, just to ensure that the Conservatives were relegated to the scrapheap where they belong. But I can’t look my queer friends in the eye and say I’m on their side if I vote Labour. My constituency, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, is a pretty safe Labour seat, and if it falls then it falls Liberal Democrat (don’t get me started on those ideologically bereft idiots). Unfortunately that safe Labour seat is filled by the revolting racist, noted sexual harasser and former alcoholic Neil Coyle, who blocked me on Twitter when I asked him why he voted against a ceasefire in Palestine (he says “it’s complicated”). I can’t endorse this cunt.

So anyway, please vote wisely today, if you’re able to. But don’t expect much to change. Labour won’t increase NHS funding enough to repair the damage of the last decade and a half of Tory psychodrama. Labour won’t make higher education more affordable. Labour won’t tax the rich. Labour won’t make housing available to those who need it. Labour won’t implement green policies that will make our land pleasant and green again. Labour won’t take a stand against genocide. Expect more tepid neoliberal bullshit and a stripping away of our rights, but wrapped in a rainbow that says “women’s rights”.

All we can do is keep making noise and looking out for our vulnerable neighbours. All I can do is vote Green and thank whichever god is listening that I was able to get out.