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   Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:20:42 JST Jenny List

   For the past month I’ve been researching a story, not in tech but which I think is important. It concerns the election, and a question: did UK Labour throw one of their candidates under the bus to stop a trans MP reaching the Commons?
   Stick around. (long thread 1/n)

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:33 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     The prospect of a strong trans MP with impecable diversity activist credentials unexpectedly electable and ready to hold their new government to account from the their own benches must have seemed alarming to say the least.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:33 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     My analysis of the campaigns in comparable Labour constituencies leads me to the conclusion that to avoid that prospect they simply starved her campaign of resources. I feel Emily would have done much better and might even have been our first out trans MP had they not done so.

     goatsarah repeated this.
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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:33 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     In researching this I asked several candidates for interviews, including Emily. She was the only one who came back to me, but failed to follow up when arranging a time. I decided to post this here in the hope that other journalists outside my niche can do a better job.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:34 JST Jenny List

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     Since the eventual result is in a large part dependent upon the campaign, it raises the question as to why this seat received such anomalous treatment from Labour. To understand that, it’s first necessary to exmine the bigger picture of the state of trans politics in 2024.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:34 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     British trans people will know, things are difficult right now. There’s been an institutional capture of the British establishment by so-called “gender-criticals”, scarcely concealed transphobia and hate speech which has found willing supporters in all political parties.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:34 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     Rishi Sunak made transphobic dog-whistling a central plank of his campaign platform during the election, and it’s fair to say that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party wasn’t too far behind him.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:34 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     Pandering to a noisy minority pushing transphobic hate speech disguised as feminism must have seemed a safe bet for an Opposition party anxious to suck up votes at any cost, but it came with a price if Labour were to hang on to their pretensions of being progressive party.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:35 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     When looking for a reason, I started with campaign Facebook pages. These read like a day to day diary, it’s easy to count the number of activists, street days, and party bigwigs. Target seats like Banbury where I come from get a lot, unwinable seats get next to nothing.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:35 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     It was in this Facebook research that it became rapidly obvious: something went seriously wrong for Emily’s Labour campaign in Isle of Wight East. Surrounding seats had far more activists on the streets, more leafleting and canvassing, and even the odd ministerial visit.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:35 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     What I think happened is this: Emily’s campaign in IoW East didn’t get the resources it should have done from Labour, instead they put their activists into other constituencies. That’s how parties win elections, they spread resources, except in this case they didn’t.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:36 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     The seat in question lies in the south of England’s Conservative heartland, and is a new seat created by boundary changes. The Isle of Wight East constituency was contested for Labour by Emily Brothers, a strong local councillor, and high-profile disability activist.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:36 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     The constituency would have been seen as a Conservative safe seat that wouldn’t have worried the Labour leadership back when Emily was selected as a candidate, but in this most unusual of elections it shifted to become a marginal at which Labour could take a fair shot.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:36 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     The IoW has always been a Conservative stronghold, and with the exception of a Labour county councillor in Cowes, remained in political terms unusually homogenious Conservative territory. In the 2024 GE though, IoW West went for Labour, while in IoW East they were nowhere.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:36 JST Jenny List

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     In other words, while Emily didn’t have IoW East in the bag, she was unexpectedly in with a plausible shot of being elected just as her colleague in the very similar IoW West was. While she wasn’t guaranteed a win, she should have done much better than she did.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:37 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     When you look at the footprint left by a campaign it’s easy to spot how it went and how many resources each party put into it. This maps pretty consistently onto the expected chance of winning, so a campaign in an unwinnable seat will be tiny compared to that in a key marginal.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:37 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     It’s so consistent that anomalies stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, and there’s one seat in particular which stood out as having an almost non-existent campaign for a promising trans Labour candidate in a seat which should have been winnable.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:38 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     The 2024 GE is over, the people have cast their votes, Keir Starmer is PM with a significant mandate and a huge majority. We have the most representative Parliament in our history, and while it’s clear some of those figures still have a way to go, it’s still a cause for joy.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:38 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     Sadly for trans people there’s not much to celebrate among those figures, as there are still none of us in parliament. The UK’s first openly transgender MP Jamie Wallis is no longer there, having come out as trans in 2022 while a sitting Conservative MP.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:38 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     There was still some hope for trans people in the campaign, as across the country there were a variety of strong candidates from our community. A few brave independent candidates took to the hustings, as well as those for Labour, the Greens, and the Liberal Democrats.

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     Jenny List (jennylist@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Aug-2024 21:25:38 JST Jenny List

     in reply to

     I started with the idea of a review of the trans campaigns, but soon found something else entirely. I saw an anomaly, something that shouldn’t have been there. An otherwise promising trans candidate sank without trace, their campaign much smaller than it should have been.