Labour, Gender and PMQs
Ed Miliband made quite a scene at Prime Minister’s
Questions this week, goading David Cameron for the lack of women in his Shadow Cabinet and among Conservatives
in the House of Commons
Cutting abruptly from a few cursory questions about the
dreadful flooding in south western England, Miliband gleefully laid into
Cameron for his all-male Government front bench, which was lacking Theresa May
and other female Cabinet members – in contrast to his own front bench, which
had been filled up with women.
He said: “I do have to say a picture tells a thousand
words... look at the all male front bench laid before us.
“You said you want to represent the whole country. I
guess they didn't let women into the Bullingdon Club either, so there we go....
“Do you think it is your fault the Conservative Party has
a problem with women?”
As ‘Yah-Boo’ Westminster politics go, it was pretty
effective. But it was also important for what it said about the Labour Party’s
evolving politics and values.
I say ‘values’ not in terms of ethics but in terms of valuing
certain forms over others – attributing the equivalent of monetary ‘value’ to different
forms of existence. One version of this would be to value the public sector
above or below the private sector; it would give value to an external form in
the world, rather than to human behaviour and the ethical background to that
behaviour.
In PMQs this week, Miliband was imposing a pretty simple
value system of ‘man’ = bad and ‘woman’ = good. If you are a woman, then you
get a plus point, and if you are a man you get a minus. It may seem strange for
a man like Miliband to be doing this, but this is common practice within Labour
and the wider liberal-left, with phrases like ‘male, pale and stale’ and “straight
white men” used widely in a derogatory fashion by men as well as women.
This brings us back to the politics of identity, whereby such things as skin colour, gender, ethnicity,
sexuality and religion are elevated to fundamental political categories through
which to favour and disfavour people.
Ultimately though, jumping on this particular bandwagon cannot
save you. The category can and will be turned back on you, as the
leftist feminist writer Ellie Mae O’Hagan did in a tweet during PMQs, saying,
“I cannot tell you how unedifying it is to see these men using women's issues
to take cheap shots at each other. It's disgusting.” There we have it again: Men
= bad. It’s a simple and straightforward value system.
O’Hagan is right about the cheap shots though. The PMQs debate
did not shed much light on the relative lack of women in politics and in
Westminster. It was more about the political knockabout and scoring points –
something Miliband seems to have done rather well to judge from the follow-up
coverage he has generated.
Democracy might be said to be a form of identity politics
too, but is different in privileging the identity between a person and their geographical
location – their home and community or nation – rather than their isolated
status as an individual with certain external attributes like gender and skin
colour. Democracy privileges that
community of shared space and location, while identity politics proper politicises
those external categories and attempts to create and maintain separate political
communities through them.
Strangely, this is what Labour is doing; despite (and, I
would say, in spite of) attempts to define itself as ‘One Nation Labour’.
As an example, you need go now further than: “it’s Labour which is the political wing of the women’s
movement” - deputy leader Harriet Harman's words to the Labour Women’s Conference last year.
Now I have written about the ‘part-capture of the Labour Party’ by the feminist movement here before, but never have I
seen it expressed so openly and explicitly before. The message is clear: Labour
is the ‘political wing’ of something outside it, the tool of something else. This
is about gender not just as a category deserving of attention and political
action for itself (which is perfectly reasonable), but as the fundamental
category subordinating others. It's an ideology of the left, maybe not new, but certainly new for a mainstream political party seeking to govern the whole country.
The power of the ‘women’s movement’ within Labour and its
associated institutions could also be seen at Labour Conference (the one for
everyone), with the Labour Women’s Network
practising a sort of blackmail by collaring prominent Labour men and demanding
they have their photo taken holding up a card pledging them never to appear on
an speaking panel with only men on it (something not great, but not exactly
crime of the century). In the case of Sadiq Khan, who declined, he was named
and shamed on Labour’s own house news site LabourList.
In my view, both men and women inside and outside Labour should
be concerned about the way we are going with this. The rhetoric and behaviour seems
to be becoming increasingly extreme, at a time when society is becoming more
accepting of women’s equality, and despite the feminists having achieved female
favouritism in virtually every corner of party activity, from micro-local
Labour branch elections to numerous women-only party events and All-Women's Shortlists (AWS) for Parliamentary candidate selection.
The feminists claim that all this stuff attracts women
voters, something which seems to be unproven at best. Indeed the pollster Peter
Kellner suggests the relatively small advantage for Labour amongst women
compared to men is largely down to predominantly female public sector workers
opposing public sector cuts.
But the message all this favouritism sends to members like
myself goes back to those double standards, or ‘values’, I talked of earlier. It
says if you are a woman, you are welcome and valued, while if you are a man (especially
a white-skinned, heterosexual man) the party would rather you were not there –
especially if you’re doing well, in which case you should be a woman.
Labour’s women’s lobby wants to apply this agenda of centrally-administered
female favouritism from the Labour Party to
the whole of society when in government, through quotas and other positive
action.
Turning groups against each other isn't a great idea generally and, personally, I can't see this ending well, neither for relations between sexes nor between Labour and the electorate.
I agree with some of what you say - lazy anti-male rhetoric for example. But I think the absence of women or members of other groups/minorities may reasonably be invoked as a possible indicator of a problem, even if some of the ways of dealing with that problem may be aggressive or heavy handed.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah, yes I agree with you that the relative lack of women and minorities it is a symbolic problem - and therefore a real problem. I am constantly amazed though at the lack of attention paid to how and why it is the case by the pressure groups and in the mainstream media. For me, perhaps the biggest reason is the power of incumbency in our political system, and the predominance of safe seats which mean changes in society (and indeed in the politics of people) don't get passed through to Parliament. Labour says that this happens with it because of AWS etc, but I'm quite sceptical - what I see is largely a political tribe (or vanguard) winning promotion for itself.
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