Using the Blair Babes as an excuse
I’ve already commented frequently about the fact of gender inequality in our society, but also of the fact most people just don’t see it.
But it’s always good to have up-to-date examples.
Take Amanda Platell, writing in the Daily Mail, for example:
“All the more so when Labour’s own experiment with female shortlists proved to be so disastrous. Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was Blair’s Babes – the female intake of the 1997 election? Remember Ruth Kelly? Jacqui Smith? Caroline Flint? As with so many Labour ladies, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”
As Sunder at Next Left points out (h/t owed for the above), neither Kelly, Smith nor Flint were actually selected via women-only shortlists. So Platell’s article commits a basic error of fact, if her argument is that all-women shortlists returned particular examples of bad MPs.
Imagine the logic, applied to men:
“All the more when the United Kingdom’s centuries-old practice of either only – or overwhelmingly (in recent years) – selecting men to be MPs has proved to be so disastrous. Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was the last 400 years of Parliamentary supremacy? Remember Anthony Eden? Neil Hamilton? David Amess? As with so many Tory gentlemen, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”
Whose Tory meritocracy is it anyway?
291 women and 4559 men have been elected to the House of Commons since women were enfranchised in 1918. So those shouting “not in my name” and “meritocracy” to argue against the possible means of all women shortlists do have a prima facie case to answer.
David Cameron’s claims that his party gets it enough to continue if he fell under a bus is rather challenged by the ferocity of the response from the Tory netroots. Aspiring candidate Iain Dale declares not in my name while the Isaby/Montgomerie co-premiership at ConservativeHome seems to think the sky might fall in. (Tory ppc Joanne Cash has offered a rare pro-leadership view).
By definition, meritocrats must share the goal of “fair chances and no unfair barriers”.
The simple question: what is the cause of the scale of under-representation? And what is the solution to deliver fair chances and equal representation?
2001 was the last General Election in which no party used an all women shortlist measure. How did we do on gender equity? Most noticed a small drop from 120 to 118 women in the Commons. The real story was missed. Just 9 out of 92 MPs elected in mainland Britain were women. Not quite 10%. The Conservative class of 2001 – 38 white men and 1 women (2.5%)- was well below the post-1918 historic Commons average.
So whose meritocracy is it anyway?
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A challenge for Tom Harris MP
A while ago Tom Harris MP wrote on his blog that:
Most organisations involved in this area [working with teenage parents] will concede that it’s about lack of self-esteem and a perception that the independence that follows childbirth – havings one’s own flat and independent income through benefits, etc – is an individual’s only route out of their current situation.
I asked him whether he could cite any evidence to support this claim, and he had a lot of links about low self-esteem and correlation between socio-economic deprivation and teenage pregnancy, but nothing to support the idea that getting a flat and benefits specifically was a major reason why teenagers got pregnant.
He said that he thought he had seen some research by the Scottish Executive which supported this case, but couldn’t find it.
This is an issue which I know that Tom is very interested in, so I would like to propose a charity bet. If, by the end of this month, Tom can provide examples of five charities who concede that many teenagers get pregnant to get a flat and benefits, or three pieces of peer-reviewed academic research which find that this is a major motivation for teenage parents, then I will give ten pounds to a charity of his choice.
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Civil partnerships are the new Black friends
If we’ve learned anything over the last few days its surely that there are certain circles in which claiming to have been in favour of the introduction of civil partnerships is very much like having Black friends.
That, broadly speaking, seems to be the impression created by Jan Moir’s weaselling non-apology for Friday’s reprehensible commentary on the untimely death of Stephen Gately.
Its certainly the impression I took from from her closing remarks:
In writing that ‘it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’ I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.
In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.
We’ve seen, already, that Moir’s on the record ’support’ for civil partnerships is, at best, desperately shallow and voyeuristic and it takes very little effort at all to discover that she’s plenty of previous form to be taken into account; from railing against the BBC for making Saturday night altogether too gay for her tastes, to suggesting that Elton John’s personal success, much of came while he was still heavily closeted, negates his criticism of religious homophobia, all the way this particularly spiteful commentary on the private lives of a number of Liberal Democrat MPs, past and present, which includes a particular fine example of the homophobic non-sequitur.
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Conservative affirmative action
This is a lovely example of conservative principles, taken from a conversation with leading American conservative thinker Irving Kristol:
“The talk turned to Irving’s son, William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.”
“With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action.
‘I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’ “
Iain Dale’s selective denunciation of homophobia
Yesterday, via Twitter, Iain Dale joined the rest of the known universe in condemning Jan Moir – for instance, by RT-ing a post by Total Politics editor Shane Greer, calling the Mail writer a ‘bigot of the worst kind.’ This follows a recent episode in which Dale was also a victim of homophobia from the Mail.
Dale rightly complained to the PCC on that occasion, and I later followed his appeal for others to add their voices, by complaining to Paul Dacre and the writer of the offending column, Peter McKay (it hardly needs saying that, to date, I have had no reply).
But whilst Dale is happy to condemn a newspaper that has a history of targeting him personally, he singularly refuses to criticise anti-gay prejudice closer to home. Indeed, he has not merely failed to speak up against homophobia among Conservatives and their allies.
To take one example: as regular readers will know, recently I uncovered how Valdemar Tomasevski, a Lithuanian MEP who is part of the Tories’ coalition in the European Parliament, personally voted for a severely repressive and homophobic law that has been condemned by human rights watchdogs, including Amnesty.
Thanks to the considerable help of Sunny, that news spread fairly widely around the leftie blogosphere, was picked up by The Observer, and commented on by Lib Dem Shadow Foreign Secretary Ed Davey.
Yet Dale refused to be drawn on the subject, even when, on a visit to my blog, he was directly challenged to explain his inconsistent stance on homophobia by another commenter. Instead, he gave a brief, obscuscating answer, and disappeared.
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Jan Moir’s record speaks for itself
You all know that I’m the kind of blogger who checks things out, so when Jan Moir claimed to be ‘on the record’ as supporting civil partnerships, I just had to go find out exactly where…
Gay weddings are fine, but a gay divorce…
Since new legislation was introduced in this country nine months ago, more than 15,500 gay couples have done the decent thing and got married. The rise and rise of civil partnerships have pushed up sales of porcelain tea sets, Ralph Lauren cashmere blankets and quality Champagnes — none of your muck here, darling – and most people seem to be in agreement that the new laws were long overdue and a jolly good thing.It is interesting, however, that the vast majority – more than 14,000 – of the ceremonies took place in England. And while the popularity of gay weddings has surprised everyone, is it too soon to point out that I can’t wait for the first of the high-profile gay divorces to start happening? Surely some of them will turn out to be the kind of fabulous ding-dongs that make a wet Monday morning, a hot cup of tea and a trashy tabloid worth living for.
Even the most well meaning and kindly Daily Telegraph readers know that, somewhere out there, among the nascent gay divorces hovering over Never-Never Land, there will be a few that will promise to make the McCartney/Mills ructions look like a teatime tiff at the Ritz.
Roll on round one.
With ‘friends’ like Jan Moir, does the gay community actually need enemies?
The right’s silly obsession with marriage
The right’s prejudice in favour of marriage can sometimes lead it to some very sloppy thinking. Two recent pieces suggest this. First, the Spectator’s leader cites ONS research showing that married men are more likely to find work that single ones, and infers that “perhaps it’s time to chivvy the unemployed to church.”
This inference suffers from two problems. One is: why does marriage enhance employability? It could be because marriage causes men to want to work more, perhaps to escape the wife’s nagging. Or it could be that marriage is merely correlated with factors that make men attractive to employers: good social skills, reliability, a conventional mindset etc.
There’s lots of research (pdf) on this question – none of which the Spectator cites – which is gloriously ambiguous.
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Jan Moir in the Daily Mail: sickening homophobia
Since Stephen Gately’s death last week, the Daily Mail has been desperately trying to dig up some dirt.
In spite of official confirmations that the Boyzone star died of natural causes, the Mail has decided that the unfortunate death of an innocent 33-year-old man is fair game (see, for instance, Paul Scott’s unashamed hatchet job the day after Gately’s death).
The lowest point was hit today by Jan Moir with her article “Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately’s death “, where this overpaid food obsessive uses a personal tragedy to lash out at civil partnerships and sexual minorities.
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How David Cameron will help Tracy Towerblocks
Could Polly Toynbee secretly be moonlighting as David Cameron’s speechwriter these days? Or maybe the Conservative Party leader had a quick butcher’s at the latest edition of Socialist Worker prior to mounting the podium in Manchester last week?
I only ask because, as a socialist, I hate having to agree with even one sentence any top Tory ever utters. It makes me feel … dirty, and not in a good way. Trouble is, it was hard to argue against some of the soundbites on offer on Thursday.
Excuse me? Who made the poorest poorer? Who left youth unemployment higher? Who made inequality greater? No, not the wicked Tories … you, Labour: you’re the ones who did this to our society.
Well, up to a point. The Tories are no slouches themselves at making the poorest poorer and presiding over three million long dole queues. Anyone who was around the 1980s will recall that Thatcherism did not exactly work wonders for the UK Gini Coefficient. But yeah, Cameron has New Labour bang to rights. Cheeky little so and so.
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Obama speaks out on gay rights
There’s been a surge in the number of articles slamming Barack Obama for his allegedly disappointing record on progressive causes in recent weeks. Only a few days ago, Mehdi Hasan wrote in the New Statesman that:
The distance between Obama and Bush on a host of policies is not as great as many people might hope or have expected – and it appears to get narrower by the day. [...] It was inevitable that even the slightest sense of continuity in policy, personnel or practice would disappoint, as it has. Obama, however, has gone further, adopting his predecessor’s positions on a wide variety of issues, from the parochially domestic to the grandly geopolitical.
Although such attacks fit in comfortably with the Left’s long history of sado-masochism, they’re also remarkably ingenerous.
When Obama spoke last night at the Human Rights Campaign he reminded us of the abyss between his administration and his predecessor’s.
Remember that only four years ago, George W Bush was publicly stating that “marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society”.
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The depressing thing about Tory welfare proposals
I was depressed by the announcement at this week’s Tory conference of plans to remove incapacity benefit (now known as ESA – Employment and Support Allowance) from around 500,000 claimants. Michael Gove puckishly characterised the move as being part of the Tories’ ‘crusade to help the poor’. So far, so Tory.
So I dug around a bit, and I discovered that this isn’t actually the depressing bit.
The Tories propose to subject all ESA claimants to an enhanced medical assessment, which is being touted as a ‘tough back-to-work test’. Those who are adjudged to be capable of work will be taken off ESA and be placed on Jobseeker’s Allowance instead – a cut of £25 per week. As ever, the unspoken assumption is that half a million (at least) of those who currently draw ESA are workshy fraudsters.
But that’s still not the depressing bit.
Two crucial issues – whether those who assess ESA claimants will be required to meet targets, and what training or professional background the assessors will have – are not addressed in the Conservatives’ document ‘Get Britain Working’. The Telegraph’s report of the Tories’ proposals, chillingly, mentions bringing in private firms to carry out the assessments; one can imagine the damage that could result from an army of poorly-trained assessors with punitive targets to meet. Will there be a right of appeal?
But brace yourself, because that’s not the depressing bit.
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Pt 2: How the Tories abandoned gay rights over Europe
I’ve been collecting information on one of David Cameron’s allies in his new European grouping. This is the second part of that investigation, the first part is here.
In part one I exposed how the Lithuanian member of David Cameron’s new European grouping had voted to support some very homophobic legislation.
To reiterate, the ‘Law on the Protection of Minors from the Detrimental Effects of Public Information’, which has been described as a harsher and more wide-reaching version of Britain’s old Section 28, bans discussion of homosexuality not only in schools but in any public places and media that could be accessed by young people.
It has been condemned by Amnesty Intl, the European Union itself and activists in the UK.
Valdemar Tomaševski, the Lithuanian MEP in question, is also on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”. Yet the Tories apparently did not view that as a reason not to welcome him into their European alliance.
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A social democrat is a conservative with some research
A while back, I wrote that:”One criticism of the welfare state is that once you include tax credits, child benefit, housing and council tax benefit and so on, a lone parent who is not in paid employment and has two children has roughly the same income as a single person who works and gets the average wage.”
One possible reaction to this is “that’s a disgrace, and it shows that benefits are too high.” This is the one which you will read a lot in the newspapers.
Fraser Nelson, Thatcherite editor of the Spectator, wrote something similar a couple of weeks ago:
Take, for example, a British girl leaving school and imagining a life of lower-paid work. The UK government presents her with two options: employment or pregnancy. If she has one child and no job, the benefit income of £207 a week is more than the average wage for a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it is £260 a week — more than a receptionist or library assistant earns. With three children, it is £324 a week, more than a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper.
Fraser is not, however, arguing that benefits need to be slashed.
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EXCLUSIVE: David Cameron’s European ally supports “deeply homophobic legislation”
Over the past few weeks I have been collecting information from human rights to shed light on one of David Cameron’s allies in his new European grouping. This is the first of a multi-part investigation.
Despite the persistent criticism that it has allied itself with extremists, David Cameron’s Conservative Party now sits in the European Parliament with the European Reformists and Conservatives group (ECR), led by Poland’s Michal Kaminski – a man allegedly with a racist and homophobic past.
But so far it has gone unreported that another ally of the Conservatives in Europe has a much more serious and recent record of homophobia.
Valdemar Tomaševski, MEP from Lithuania, and member of the Tories’ Euro coalition, is on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”.
Not only that, I can now reveal for the first time that he also personally voted for a Lithuanian law that has been described as a harsher, more wide-reaching version of Britain’s Section 28.
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Labour: losing friends in the north
For generations, the default assumption of southerners meeting northerners has been that they are likely to be Labour supporters.
There always have been pockets of Toryism at positions further up the M1 than Londoners usually care to go, from the rolling farmlands of the East Riding to the Cheshire stockbroker belt, of course.
But they were more than outweighed for by solid ranks of proletarian steelworkers, miners, textile workers and shipbuilders. Yorkshire, Lancashire and Tyneside rank among the historic cradles of Labourism.
These have been the bastions of ‘our people’, the ones who voted Labour in 1979. The ones who voted Labour in 1931, for that matter.
Until now.
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New Labour’s best legacy
If you were around in 1996-97 the sense of deja-vu is palpable. Swap round the words Labour and Tory and oogle at the easy ride David Cameron is being given: from clearing away cereal boxes in front of BBC cameras to hugging huskies, there are plenty of clues that P45 forms for the current ministers are ready for collection.
But while many are dreading a shift of the pendulum on a number of issues such as public spending, social policy or the EU, one change that took place during New Labour’s tenure is here to stay: Britain’s approach towards sexuality.
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Why Tory ideas on welfare reform won’t work
Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice have published a report which they modestly claim is “the most far-reaching review of the welfare system in 60 years”. It can be downloaded here.
At the core of the CSJ’s recommendations are measures to make work pay, and reduce the working couple penalty. To encourage claimants into work, the report recommends more gradual rates of withdrawal of benefits.
It says there should be only two benefits for working age people: Universal Work Credit “earned” through participation in welfare to work schemes, which would integrate benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support; and Universal Life Credit providing additional income to people with low or no earnings. The report also advocates changes intended to reduce penalties for socially constructive behaviour such as marriage and cohabitation, saving and taking out a mortgage.
Some quick thoughts:
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Why’s the media giving Dorries an easy ride?
I pointed out not long ago that the TUC was not looking to ban high heels, only to stop employers forcing women to wear them. The medical evidence is clearly against employers. Now that the TUc conference is taking place, the motion is in the news agenda again.But you can’t even rely on left-wing newspapers to make this clear or call out Nadine Dorries.
Here’s the Tory MP again:
I applaud the society of Chiropodists for pointing out to me the dangers of this; however, having done so I now respectfully ask them to leave it me and every other high heel wearing woman in the land to decide whether or not we wear high heels in the workplace..
Of course this isn’t the first time Nadine Dorries MP has chosen to disregard medical evidence. Now, she wants women to have the choice to wear high heels, but apparently not to avoid wearing them.
The Independent today, while clarifying that the TUC motion is not to ban high heels, still lets her get away with the last word without asking her, who has actually demanded that high heels be banned?
It’s typical of right-wing politicians that when they don’t like a debate they simply change the way they frame it. It’s more annoying to see that left-wing newspapers can’t even bring themselves to call out those Tory MPs.
More reading
Left Outside: High Heels, Low Politics
John Innit: Et tu Konnie? The stilettos go in
Byrne’s Tofferings: TUC, High Heels, and Nadine Dorries
Lefties surrendering to the conservative movement
The Observer recently reported that ‘a senior government aide’ told them that, “I personally think we have got to look at universal benefits. It is unsustainable.”
Jackie Ashley wrote, “if there have to be cuts, then taking away child benefit from the better off, and the winter fuel payment from richer pensioners, would seem sensible ideas and are on Labour’s agenda.”
Comically, these are described as measures for Labour to shore up ‘the core vote’. They are nothing of the sort. The proposals to get rid of universal benefits are quite simply an unconditional surrender to people who loathe and despise left-wing values.
It has been a long term project of the conservative movement in this country to undermine the welfare state, and reduce it to a low cost, low quality residuum for poor people.
It is sad and pathetic to see government advisers and leftie journalists buying into the values and assumptions of the conservative movement and trying to undermine these achievements.
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» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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