Why I'm not left-wing anymore

Politically non-binary, I have no one to vote for

I’m always going against the grain. Just as Labour will probably win the next general election, I no longer support the left.

I’ve always considered myself left-of-centre and, for a period, far left/anarchist. My experiences as a single parent in the UK and living in France has affected my politics and my vote.

I don’t usually write political pieces. I haven’t studied politics at university. I haven’t read any of the important books. I’m not really a thinker. I’m a person who operates on instinct, on gut feeling, what feels right, what feels fair. I’m like most people on this.

Motherhood, single

I’m one of Thatcher’s children. From leaving school in 1979, the Tories had been in power continuously, which felt depressing and oppressive, like no change was ever possible. In 1989 I moved to France to escape the endless Tory governments. In 1994 I became a mother. After a nine-year relationship, in which my partner was increasingly abusive, in 1996 I became a single mother and returned to the UK.

In 1997, I was so relieved that Tony Blair had won. A new dawn. But Blair’s first act was to remove Lone Parent Benefit (£6 a week on top of benefits – not much, but a recognition that our job was tougher, our incomes were lower, we were poorer). Any dream I had about the Labour Party changing things crashed to Earth. I was incensed.

I went to parliament to attend the special committees that discussed the bill. There, I met activists from Wages for Housework although many of these women weren’t single parents – they were lesbians in couples. If you have a partner, by definition you aren’t single.

I am a full time job. Single parents protesting outside parliament against Blair removing Lone Parent Benefit.

I ferried other single parents to parliament for the protest. I had a car, something I clung onto; it gave me precious freedom and mobility.

I went to see Glenda Jackson, my MP, at one of her surgeries. I led a delegation of single mothers from the attached community centre. She was terrifying and haughty, booming in a trained stage voice. I guess she thought she was in with a chance with Tony Blair at that point, but she only ever made it to junior transport minister. I knew my facts and answered back when she made false statements. I corrected her when she talked about the epic problem of teen parents and council housing. ‘Only 6% of single parents are teenagers. Most of us are divorced, widowed or separated.’

Afterwards she complained to the community centre, saying I was a dangerous activist (single parents weren’t supposed to be articulate) and that she would demand the council defunded the single parents group. Nice.

Protest outside parliament against removal of Lone Parent Benefit

I attended parliament when the bill went through, with my two year old. I was the only single parent in the strangers gallery, and she was the only child. I felt like the MPs needed to see us, the people they were affecting. On the way out I saw Labour MPs in the lift. ‘Shame on you,’ I said. They didn’t care. They were out for themselves, jubilant at finally being in power. Few MPs are good or intelligent; most just want status.

At the same time I was a member of a Camden-funded single parents group that gave single parents five hours of free babysitting a month. It was a lifeline, although to be honest I had no money or friends to go out with. I’d been living in France for five years, had my pregnancy in France, and therefore didn’t have a peer group of fellow mums. I often didn’t know what to do on those precious evenings. It wasn’t enough babysitting to attend a weekly evening class, for instance. Sometimes in a desperate bid to use up this time I went to a comedy club on my own, which was kind of embarrassing. Labour shut down this group, they wanted the funds (a paltry £35k a year) for Sure Start, which was for all parents. It was very important for Blair’s Labour not to target help at lone parents, because that might encourage us to breed.

The National Council for One Parent Families was the main charity for single parents. They went along with Blair’s legislation, having been bribed by a massive grant. I attended one of their talks by their new CEO, a young woman with no children. She’d done some kind of university degree in charity work/third sector bullshit. That was her qualification.

She said they had jobs going. I went up to her afterwards, saying I’d like one: I could type, use computers etc. ‘You can’t,’ she gasped. ‘You have a pre-school child. It wouldn’t be possible.’ They asked if I’d like to do media interviews as a case study. ‘Blair’s a Catholic,’ I told them. ‘That’s why he’s doing this.’ They decided I was too political, too controversial. When he stepped down as Prime Minister, he officially converted to Catholicism.

I went on a government-funded Gingerbread course for lone parents to get back into work. It was rubbish but would pay childcare while I was on it. All of the so-called jobs they had available were looking after richer mum’s kids. So I could get paid to look after someone else’s kids but not my own? I wrote an article for the Independent on this. The next day I went in, I was hauled into a room and made to face a panel attacking me. No warning. No offer of getting representation to support my side. I was chucked off the course. Afterwards they phoned my daughter’s nursery and tried to recoup the childcare payment.

Most of these government courses were scams – nice little earners for the organisers (one of which I believe was the local Labour MP’s son). They were tick-box schemes that didn’t deliver any real training or prospects for single parents. Single parents don’t work because you need a high-paying job to be able to afford childcare. (Seeing what my daughter pays for childcare, I don’t suppose this has changed.)

A mother’s place is in the wrong. You are damned if you work and damned if you don’t.

A little later, Gordon Brown gave £1,000 to each child as savings for the future, the Child’s Trust Fund. But only to children born under a Labour administration. My child had been born just before Labour got in, so tough. The cynicism of politicians.

The pink bloc

My daughter on the Make Poverty History bus, and the specially hired train from Kings Cross taking sambistas to Gleneagles G8

From 2002, for about a decade, I was part of an activist samba group, Rhythms of Resistance. Several times a week I went on demonstrations and took part in direct action events. I played a huge drum, called a surdo (Brazilian for deaf). (The smaller the woman, the bigger the drum seems to hold true from my experience.) I loved the deep booming regular rhythm I could create. Playing was therapeutic.

As a single mother I was lonely and isolated. I took my daughter with me to weekly rehearsals and all the demonstrations. She became an adept drummer (much better than me) and even became a maestro, conducting the all-adult band. As a single mum/only child combo, it became a community for us. They played with and cared about my daughter. They even came en masse to Camden School for Girls to support and play with her when I tried to get her in on a music scholarship (I failed).

Sienna teaching drumming workshop for Roma, People's Global Action, Belgrade

My daughter came to G7 protest camps (Evian and Stirling), played and helped me cook. She came to workshops showing how to resist arrest. In Belgrade, she taught Roma children how to drum at the People’s Global Action conference. She took part in meetings and huddles, becoming proficient at Reclaim the Streets sign language (lots of wavy hands). We went on a billboard defacing direct action in which we climbed scaffolding and pasted words about climate change onto a car advert.

Sienna involved in activism from a young age. Hacking a car advert in Old Street.

Brexit

At a Brexit protest: ‘Et tu, Theresa’ banner

I voted for Brexit. I was very pro-Europe until I actually moved there and saw how countries such as France did not obey any of the rules, while us Anglos did. In France I wasn’t entitled to free healthcare, any housing benefit, any free French lessons, any courses to train for work. My partner of the time, who was French, had lived in England for two years previously: he got benefits, housing benefit, free English lessons, training, and free healthcare.

I lived in France for seven years. I have a French daughter. I speak French and Spanish. I know Europe. The EU as an organisation is corrupt, ineffective, inefficient and expensive.

I think the left have proved themselves to be anti-democratic. They do not respect the people. The left is now run by unrealistic, middle and upper class, unpatriotic, London-centric people who do not love Britain.

This process really became evident with Brexit. The disrespect that the left-wing showed to the people’s vote on Brexit shocked and dismayed.

I’m a Lexiter. Just like Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn. The reason Labour lost the last election is because Jeremy Corbyn didn’t have the moral strength to say what he really thought. He allowed Keir Starmer to influence Labour’s policy on Brexit. I feel it was partly Starmer’s fault that Corbyn did less well in 2019 than he did in 2017. But somehow Starmer has ended on top, the winner. It’s desperate.

Women’s rights

The left is pathetic on women’s rights. Labour’s has never even elected a woman as leader.

Some would say I’m a terf, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. That is too simplistic. I don’t want to exclude trans women. But they aren’t the same as biological women. I find it personally offensive when trans women pretend to understand what it is like to be a woman. They have their own difficulties and prejudices but the most intense experiences I have had in my life are as a result of my sex. Pregnancy, childbirth, periods, fibroids, bringing up a child on my own as a single mother, have all been bloody awful. No trans woman has ever gone through that. They’ve gone through other difficulties, of which I’m very sympathetic.

Biology counts.

Green stuff

Of course I support recycling, saving the environment, reducing emphasis on cars, all that hopey changey stuff. But having a car, being able to drive, is one of the best things I’ve achieved. It’s the difference – as a mother, as a woman – between freedom and being stuck at home, trapped, with nothing to do.

Without a car, I couldn’t have got anything done. I love driving. I love being on the road.

I like having heating (although I haven’t been able to pay for it for the last two winters). I like open fires and wood burners. I like electricity and gas. I don’t have the money (even with the subsidy) or the room for a heat pump. I live in an Edwardian flat. A heat pump is not going to work for me. Or dare I say it, for most Londoners. We don’t live in houses, we live in flats. Only multimillionaires live in houses.

It’s all stick and no carrot: making ordinary people suffer for unrealistic ideals.

As I said before having a car is important for my autonomy. For my mental health. And, as I get older, for my physical safety. I despise and despair of Labour run councils punishing the poor for having a vehicle. The relentless fines, 20mph zones, speeding tickets for going 5mph over the speed limit (a friend got a ticket for going one mile an hour over the limit, no kidding) not going to affect richer people. They will be irritated, pay it and move on.

Recently I went up to Holy Island, Lindisfarne, to do a story. I paid for parking in the car park on an app. Returning to my car, I got a ticket. This car park was just for coaches and the disabled I found out, something I hadn’t noticed as I was the first to arrive. A whole row had the tickets. Nice little earner.

I didn’t even know a coach could pay for parking with an app and am surprised they pay the same fee as a car. This is Northumberland council making a quick buck out of tourists. I’d bloody slept in my car the night before to save money, but had to pay for parking twice: via app and via a fine.

Racism

Condescending captions on the racial bias of milk at the Wellcome Institute

The left has its own version of racism.

One of the worst exhibitions I have ever seen, leaving me spluttering with anger, was ‘Milk’ at the Wellcome Collection. Organised, of course, by a white curator, she suggested that black people aren’t sufficiently educated enough to buy milk.

This is what head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh calls ‘progressive racism’.

‘A deep-seated progressivist racism fuels the condescending belief that ethnic minorities cannot think and choose for themselves.’

Israel and Islam

I’ve never been particularly pro or anti Israeli. I’ve always been pro-Jewish. I grew up with them. As a north Londoner, I went to a semi-Jewish school, South Hampstead School for Girls. We had a Jewish assembly every morning, alongside the Christian assembly. My friends were mostly Jewish. As schoolchildren of that era, the 70s, most of my friends had very little family left. Their grandparents had been killed in the holocaust. I consider myself Jewish adjacent.

I find the influence of Islam on Labour pernicious. I think the 7/10/23 attacks were an abomination, how Hamas deliberately targeted women and children, how they denigrated, defiled them. There is no excuse.

Keir Starmer

This episode of Black Mirror sucks banner at a protest

I don’t trust him. I think he’s dangerous. All he cares about is power. He lied to get into power.

Politically, I’m non-binary. I can’t vote for either of the two main parties, nor the Greens or Lib Dems because of their stance on trans rights versus women’s rights. I live in a very safe Labour seat so my vote doesn’t really count in any meaningful way. I’ll probably vote SDP or Reform. Posie Parker had a ‘Let Women Speak’ party but it’s been rejected by the Electoral Commission. The so-called Women’s Equality Party is anything but.

So my vote will register a protest against our binary political system but won’t actually change what happens in my constituency.