Conservative Party

• LONDON, March 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Boris Johnson would be a liability to the Conservative election campaign according to the latest poll from Lord Ashcroft, and Labour have extended their lead even though voters backed individual Budget measures.
• Following news that Boris Johnson is set to campaign for the Conservatives at the election, we found voters saying he would be a liability to the Tories rather than an asset by 59% to 20%.
• Keir Starmer was seen as a net liability by 33% to 31%, and Angela Rayner by 27% to 24%.
• Full details and data tables are available at LordAshcroftPolls.com
  LORD ASHCROFT KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, pollster and author.

• “I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they’re adults,” Poilievre said.
• Poilievre is one among many politicians to wade into debates surrounding gender-affirming health care in recent years.
• Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has proposed controversial policies that would affect gender-diverse youth, including prohibiting puberty blockers for children aged 15 and under.

Fertility and gender-affirming medicine

• Two opinion columnists recently wrote about gender-affirming care for minors, making drastically different remarks about the fertility implications of this care.
• Research on fertility outcomes is lackluster to begin with, but outcomes are highly sensitive to whether puberty blockers were taken prior to starting cross-sex hormones and the stage of puberty.
• However, for transgender people who begin cross-sex hormones after undergoing at least some natal puberty, fertility does not seem to be permanently affected.

Puberty blockers

• When puberty blockers were first tested for use with gender dysphoric youth, transgender adults were being coercively sterilized.
• In fact, fertility is not the only issue at stake with puberty blockers.

• A team of Dutch clinicians who were among the first to offer transgender children puberty blockers recently acknowledged that these drugs may not be just a “pause button” to explore identity, as originally intended.
• But there are also major consequences involved in delaying or withholding treatment with puberty blockers, which could hurt transgender girls more than boys.
• Poilievre gives the wrong impression by saying that “we should protect the rights of parents to make their own decision with regards to their children,” because, given the age of the child, parents are typically involved in the decision to start puberty blockers.

Detransition debate

• Detransition also tops the list.
• On one side, opponents of gender-affirming care distort studies to argue detransition has reached epidemic proportions and draw from testimonies of regretful detransitioners as a “cautionary tale against medical transitioning.” Proponents retort by dismissing detransition either by alluding to its “rarity,” using outdated and flawed studies, or by decoupling the experience from regret.
• As a result, the public is exposed to two different sets of “facts,” none of which reflect the heterogeneity that we and others have encountered in researching detransition — different psychological, medical and social motives for detransitioning; a range of emotions including regret, resilience, and satisfaction; expansive patterns of identity discovery and fluidity.

Guidelines, dilemmas and the need for high-quality research

• But that does not mean the science is settled or that the medicine has no room for improvement.
• Gender-affirming care is riddled with ethical dilemmas that have spilled over into an explosive political situation.
• The changing landscape of transgender health care, debates about puberty blockers and detransition are all low-hanging fruit for opportunistic politicians like Poilievre.

• He is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
• Pablo Expósito-Campos receives funding from the Predoctoral Research Fellowship Program of the Government of the Basque Country, Spain.

• Almost immediately after being appointed as foreign secretary, David Cameron’s ties with China generated difficult headlines for Rishi Sunak’s government.
• Cameron’s time in office has been described as a “golden era” for UK-China relations.
• But now, in a very different political climate, de Pulford has accused the new foreign secretary of “shilling for the UK’s biggest security threat”.

The ups and downs of UK-China relations

• The policies merely noted China’s continuing economic rise and argued that the UK should engage with it to resolve common problems.
• China was bundled into a broad, rather vague category of “rising powers” that the UK would aim to engage with more closely.
• By hosting the Tibetan leader, Cameron triggered great upset in Beijing, which placed relations with the UK in a “deep freeze” for nearly 18 months.

Warming up

• This peaked in the autumn of 2015 when Xi made his state visit to the UK.
• At a joint press conference, Cameron declared that China and the UK shared strong economic, diplomatic, and “people-to-people” links.
• He declared that the UK and China “share an interest in a stable and ordered rule” in international affairs.

Cooling down

• Cameron’s ties with China have the potential to aggravate tensions with backbench MPs who are already restive.
• His party is currently divided over any number of other issues and primed to fall out over any number of others.
• Meanwhile, a noticeable gap in intentions between senior members of the government risks sending confusing signals to China.
• Ultimately, it will be up to Cameron’s current boss, Rishi Sunak, to try and resolve these tensions – ideally, before a major crisis breaks.

Timothy Oliver does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• OTTAWA, Nov. 29, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) is pleased with the success of its first-ever multi-party reception hosted by the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the New Democrat Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the Green Party.
• This unprecedented event provided an inclusive platform for Friendship Centre delegates to champion the integration of Friendship Centre priorities across party lines, with a particular focus on long-term sustainable funding, emergency response mechanisms for natural disasters such as wildfires, and the devolution of services to urban Indigenous communities.
• The National Association of Friendship Centres remains steadfast in its commitment to building strong partnerships and fostering open dialogues with all political parties.
• The organization believes that collaborative efforts are instrumental in creating policies that reflect the diverse needs and aspirations of urban Indigenous peoples across Canada.