The co-founders of the Women’s Equality Party – Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer – have published a long, rambling article in the Observer explaining why they’re backing a motion at their forthcoming conference next month proposing to shut down the party. Having read it, I’m none the wiser.
They begin by blaming money problems, which sounds very plausible:
Money has always been a problem, with most of the party’s income coming from members who were already cash-strapped before the one-two punch of the pandemic and cost of living crisis. Unlike other parties, we have never received large donations from corporates or super-rich individuals. In fact, in the early days of the party we turned down a gamechanging sum after the potential donor explained the strings attached: we would have to change the name of the party. Yep, ditch “Women”. Thanks, but no thanks.
But they immediately go on to say that a lack of funds isn’t the reason they want to pull down the shutters:
If funding were the only issue, we would almost certainly advocate for keeping going. But business as usual is not an option. The world has changed and so we are calling for an end as a new beginning.
So, er, what’s the reason?
It’s because they’ve been too successful, apparently.
Our founding idea was simple: if we could show there were votes in feminism, the old parties would attempt to neutralise us by mimicking us, just as we had seen them do with Ukip and its successors.
The ploy worked. WE racked up a whacking number of votes in our very first election, triggering the anticipated response. From then on, WE delivered each of our successive manifestos to other parties with a label reading “please steal us”, and they did. They put up women against us, too, and echoed our positions on vital subjects they had previously ignored.
So, is that the reason the party is hitting the self-destruct button? It’s a victim of its own success? Not so fast. Even though it’s been astonishingly successful – really, really successful – there’s still a great deal to do in the cause of “intersectional feminism” and it’s getting harder and harder to do because of the… “hard Right”:
It even used to be possible to work with those Conservatives who regarded gender inequality and climate change as urgent issues rather than fodder for culture wars. As recently as Theresa May’s premiership, one of her chief advisers called us to Downing Street to discuss which WE policies the government might incorporate in its legislative programme. Now we operate in a political landscape where the Tories’ attempts to contain the electoral threat from the Hard right has instead seen them fully captured by it.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s Labour has also veered to the Right, fixated on discipline, both fiscal and within its own ranks. The leadership barely listens to its MPs and wider membership, so it is hardly likely to pay heed to us. Nor would they be tempted by our policies. WE view care as an investment; they see it as an expense that can be cut.
All of this means that merely tweaking our approach cannot be enough, and this isn’t just about WE. The last Westminster election might have looked like a return to safer ground, just as the 2020 US presidential contest did, but such results are misleading. In many countries, populism and tech-driven polarisation are winning, to the benefit of the far right and other extremists, dictators and repressive regimes around the globe.
We must do more, not less, to confront the storm.
How, exactly, shutting down the party is doing more, is left to the reader’s imagination.
In short, their explanation for wanting to wind up the party is completely incoherent.
So, do we know the real reason?
One clue is contained in a piece in the Mail, which points out that the party was roiled by an internal row when Dr. Heather Brunskell-Evans, then the party’s spokesman for violence against women and girls, was dismissed after saying on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze that some parents and medical staff were too quick to diagnose gender-confused children as being trapped in the wrong body. As Dr. Brunskell-Evans pointed out:
I am a woman, I’ve worked for women all my life and one trans woman made a complaint about something which I think was a reasonable statement to make.
When I first joined the Women’s Equality Party, I thought it was going to be revolutionary and that we would all be free of gender because it is a restrictive, socially constructed concept.
But now the party is acting as if biology is a social invention and gender is inherent in a person from birth.
I didn’t sign up to that. I feel betrayed.
So, another feminist organisation torn apart by the schism between those who believe women’s sex-based rights should trump trans rights, e.g. women shouldn’t be forced to compete against biological men in women’s sports, and those who think the opposite? Perhaps. This schism is referred to in the Observer article, although there’s no reference to the party’s shabby treatment of Dr. Brunskell-Evans.
WE held a members’ assembly to try to shed light and diminish heat in the fight between trans inclusive and gender critical feminism that is weakening the women’s movement to the delight of regressive populists.
Not surprisingly, the gender critical feminist Julie Bindel is unimpressed by the Observer article, describing the founders as “posh wazzocks”.
The Spectator can also throw some light on Sandi and Catherine’s decision to close the shop:
It comes after a decade of stunning electoral success that saw them win a single seat in Hampshire in this year’s local elections. At this general, they then fielded four candidates across the country who won a combined total of 1,275 votes. How will Westminster cope with their absence?
So, is that the real reason? Because the Women’s Equality Party couldn’t persuade anyone to vote for it? It seems this was the original aim, given this rather sad ‘counter’ on the party’s Wikipedia page:
I’m looking forward to a seditious, gossipy account by a disgruntled insider, along the same lines as Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie’s and The Rise and Fall of News on Sunday about an unsuccessful attempt by a group of Lefties to set up a tabloid newspaper.
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Even if you ask a deep question the answers tend to be rather cagey. The limits are the limits of analysis compared to inspiration. If you are impressed by AI then you probably have very limited knowledge of literature and culture. The whole spirit of literature is the rejection of AI. There is always a sense that the writing down involves a sacrifice and loss.
Unfortunately, being an extremely stupid dog with paws unsuited to touch screens I haven’t yet worked out what the real utility is of (misnamed) AI or indeed tiktok unless it is reduce the youth of western countries to utter imbecility, an objective it seems to be achieving satisfactorily well.
LLMs seem to be reasonably ok at digesting large volumes of information and summarising it accurately and coherently in response to questions. They are also ok at generating images though that’s not really my field.
It depends how you define “intelligence” but AI is perhaps an unfortunate term.
I am similarly uninterested in the (misnamed) AI.
I honestly don’t think we’re missing much, Jack the dog.
I speak as a professional in the IT field.
But please do not take my word for it. It could be amazing. In the meantime, I need to put another log on the fire.
Your enemies lie within. It is just stupid to pretend otherwise and that the Chinese are looking to attack you. For God’s sake you only have to have lived in a western country in the last thirty years. You destroyed yourself.
Never use touch screen technology. It is good to have a touch screen because it tends to be durable but please never actually touch anything on the screen.
Why?
It is stupd for many reasons. They wil easily beat you in maths and physics exams and will generally have more vitality. But they aren’t trying to destroy the West. Their very existence is predicated on trying to be a good emulation of the west in certain ways. If you go all over Asia they love American culture and the American people. It is assumed that the Iranians hate America. This is the opposite of the truth they are the most pro-American culture in the world. They assume that Iranians hate Jews when Iran gave refuge to the Jews for 2500 years and still the real capital of Jewish power is Tehran and Jewish culture is in large part Persian culture, You shouldn’t listen to the crap they pedal.
If deep seek is truly open source the sureky it should be possible to identify any malign intentions from analysis of the source code.
From a brief search there seems to be some dispute as to whether it’s truly open source. I don’t know enough about how LLMs work to have a view myself.
Ta!
They don’t want you. They don’t care. They have better things to do.
I am a lot less worried about DeepSeek (i.e. not at all, I don’t use it, I don’t know what it’s for) than I am worried about what Google, the NSA, CIA, MI6, GCHQ et al already think they know about me.
Who paid the developers is the unanswered question? It has to be the CCP!