I’d like to see that list.

Having recieved the list of proposals to be debated by the Yes Cymru AGM , i have never come across so much naval gazing in my life. It has been taken over by the gender warfare brigade who will if they get their way police every thought of every member. I feel all is lost. Nothing on how to grow the movement to reach the downtrodden common man and woman of Wales

I guess it could be summed up thus: the Red Wall fell because the social conservatism of UKIP, Brexit Party and the Conservatives won out over Labour’s economic position. I still say that masterstroke of sloganeering, “Get Brexit Done” played a big part too.

That’s a point I’ve made many times. It’s a widespread phenomenon – well, certainly in anglophone countries – that the left has lost the white working class. We saw it with Brexit, with Trump’s election in 2016, with Ukip and the Brexit Party doing so well in European election and, most recently, with Tory gains in December 2019.

The working class vote has to be replaced. So the left relies on the ‘metropolitan elite’ and minorities, religious, ethnic and sexual. But these are not enough to compensate for the loss of the working class, certainly in the UK and, to a lesser extent, Wales.

At the same time I’d be very hard pressed to conceive of any real continuity between the old ‘Working man’ Left of the coal mine and steel mill and this modern incarnation. Tangentially, and in the abstract, as in they both see themselves as standing up for the ‘oppressed’, yes, but there’s an enormous gulf between the thoughts and actions of a TeifiAndAled and your Rhondda Miner pre-Thatcher archetypes.

To quote esteemed junior scholar Martin Prince, from either an episode or the Simpsons Movie, in response to being called gay: “I’m not anything yet!”. Surely prepubescent children who have not yet developed sexual characteristics are yet to settle into any permanent identity or orientation?

I can see me using that!

Taffiban not Taliban

And Brychan, your comment that Helen Mary Jones wants ‘transexuals banned from public services in Wales’ is slander. If you want to demonise her, you need to find another angle. One with at least a grain of truth in it.

The issues with the Tavistock are a lot more complex than ‘diligence’. Whistle blowers raised serious concerns both about the apparent desire of some parents to ‘transition’ a child they feared was gay – but also that an institutional policy of ‘affirmation’ meant that a lack of scrutiny of the child and family situation was institutional. Not the odd oversight of an overworked doctor. Let’s remember that staff joked about their being ‘no gay kids left’. Of course, the elephant in the room is that if we believe that ‘gender identity’ exists, and is something one is born with, rather than something shaped by cultural influences and life experience – then investigating why a 10 year old boy might be adamant he is ‘really’ a girl is redundant. If he says he’s a girl – he’s a girl. If he has been raised in an environment with violent or absent father figures, with strict gender roles, or in a family or culture where he can see that being attracted to other males will mean he is ostracised and outcast – well, most compassionate people can see why a sensitive boy might wish they were a girl. And it has nothing to do with an innate gendered ‘essence’ of self, or a gendered soul.