Has this shock Tory victory exposed the costs of Labour’s trans extremism?

The unexpected Conservative triumph in Hackney has lessons that go wider that just east London

Source - Daily Telegraph 20/01/24

With all the other by-elections going on, you probably haven’t been keeping a close eye on recent events in Hackney, east London, where the Conservatives have just pulled off an astonishing victory by winning the hotly contested Cazenove ward with 53 per cent of the vote.

Labour’s shock defeat came after its candidate Laura Pascal was suspended and then reinstated in the run-up to polling day on Thursday. This fiasco was believed to relate to an (entirely sensible) post she had made on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Trans women are not female. By definition they are male.” She is also thought to have been criticised for appearing to “like” another post which suggested a trans woman wearing “womanface” was sexist.

Labour saw its vote share plummet by 13 points to 31 per cent – heralding an unexpected victory for Pascal’s Conservative rival, Ian Sharer.

Labour had seemingly suspended Pascal so close to polling day that it could not tweak the ballot papers – and then reinstated her less than a day before the local ballot. It would surely not be ridiculous to draw the conclusion that the party has lost an election to the Conservatives because it suspended a candidate for stating a biological fact.

Could this be evidence of ordinary voters turning against the hard-Left’s ideological extremism? 

It is perhaps also worth noting that the Cazenove ward falls within the Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency, represented by Diane Abbott. She was suspended by Labour last year after suggesting that Irish people, Jews and Travellers do not experience racism.

Labour might well argue that the good people of Hackney actively turned against Pascal because of her social media posts. But if that were the case, surely voters would have switched to the Greens or the Lib Dems, who only secured 13 per cent and 2 per cent of the vote respectively, rather than the Tories? 

Note to CCHQ: another reason Sharer won was because he opposed Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). 

Pascal describes herself in her online profile as “unapologetic for my gender critical views”. Perhaps Reform should tap her up.