Craig Young examines the results of Britain’s general election (including Posie Parker’s votes) and wonders if New Zealand might follow.
On July 4, the axe finally fell on the factionalised, negligent and incompetent British Conservative government. So what next?
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party stormed to a landslide victory, as anticipated, although encouragingly, LGBTQI+ allies the Liberal Democrats achieved their best numbers for several decades, surging to 72 seats in Great Britain’s enormous 650-seat parliament.
Sadly, not all LGBTQI+ allies did that well. Plagued by infighting and corruption allegations, the Scottish National Party was decimated (now 38 seats). While the UK Greens picked up four MPs, Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK now has five. It remains to be seen whether Farage has the skills to lead a parliamentary party or whether his caucus turns out to be full of troglodyte grotesqueries who rode in on his coattails.
As for the defeated Conservatives (now just 121 seats, down from 365), former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak resigned immediately after tendering his resignation to King Charles. Unhappily, anti-transgender zealots and hard right drones Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch won their seats, so we can expect to hear more attempted demonisation of trans people from their caucus as a consequence. Happily though, their fellow transphobe and failed leader Liz Truss lost her seat. Overall, judging from the results, however, the Conservative downfall seems to have decimated the ranks of social conservatives in the House of Commons.
Let’s look at the political fringe. Predictably, the fundamentalist “Christian Peoples’ Alliance” tanked. As for far-right transphobe Posie Parker’s self-styled “Party for Women”, it obtained five thousand votes in all. Amusingly, however, the satirical “Monster Raving Loony Party” pipped it, securing 5800 votes. As for Parker herself, who stood in the Bristol South electorate, she managed to scrounge together only 196 votes in all! Even better, the seat itself went to Caroline Denyer, the UK Greens co-leader, an openly bisexual woman.
Starmer looks to have started well, cancelling the extremist Conservative plan to deport refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. British LGBTQI+ immigration rights groups and civil libertarians opposed the policy due to Rwanda’s history of political instability and endemic homophobia and transphobia.
As for Starmer’s own concessions to the Conservatives over anti-trans policies, however, he could neutralise the issue of transgender rights by allowing conscience votes over the issue, providing an opportunity to allow his more progressive MPs to advance trans rights despite his ‘personal objections’. The same modus vivendi worked with abortion rights for many years. Speaking of which, Britain may look set to follow Australia, New Zealand and Canada when it comes to abortion decriminalisation given the decimation of socially conservative MPs.
Finally, what about the Conservative Opposition? When they were defeated in 1997, it took them thirteen years to find a moderate enough leader, David Cameron, who proceeded to improve the party’s green credentials and even voted for marriage equality in 2013.
Unhappily, the party was then hijacked by the Eurosceptic Brexit faction and after Cameron, Theresa May and a retinue of lacklustre, incompetent and increasingly authoritarian replacements presided over a factionalised and shrill extremist caucus.
Braverman and Badenoch are amongst the frontrunners for Conservative leader, suggesting their colleagues have learnt nothing about pandering to unrepresentative right-wing extremist populist political factions. Moderate Conservatives need to reassert themselves or risk the party degenerating into a pack of gibbering idiots whose fringe obsessions render them unelectable.
ACT and New Zealand First, take note.