Cabinet Positions: A blow to the fight for women’s equality

So really, where are the women? Out of 29 cabinet posts, how many of those do you think are women? Take a guess. The answer is 4. Yes, 4! To say that Cameron is an active promoter for all-women short lists, he certainly forgot about that when picking his premier (that is not to say I agree with all-women shortlists – I have voiced my opposition to them a countless number of times). And Clegg, to say that he is supposedly in a party who pride themselves on equality, it is very disappointing that none of the LibDem cabinet posts went to a woman.

Well firstly, I have my own views regarding the LibDem cabinet positions. Everyone of them appointed were involved in the discussions and negotiations – can it be any more obvious why?. It can be the only explanation for why Simon Hughes for example, a very competent LEFT centered LibDem, is shafted for Chirs Huhme (involved in the negotiations) at energy and climate change.

Lets consider the women who do feature within the cabinet. Theresa May is the token woman, as both Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality. The latter ministerial position should have definitely been given to a woman within the LibDems given that we are witnessing a quite exciting movement within our party, who advocate the advancement of women’s rights (e.g Real Woman campaign). MPs I am thinking of here include Jo Swinson, Lynne Featherstone and Sarah Teather. A ministerial position for Woman and Equality, in my opinion, requires 100% input and this is hardly going to happen when May is busy implementing policies such as the unworkable immigration cap.

More on Theresa May. Lets not forget that Home Secretary is not seen as an admirable position by many. Look at those before May, Johnson arguably ruined his leadership bid with an array of incompetent decisions. Then Jacqui Smith, who faced a very tough time before Johnson – and eventually resigned under the pressure. So for starters, May hardly got a great deal as the most prominent woman minister.

Now more on this equality position of hers. As PinkPaper point out:

“In 1998 she voted against an equal age of consent. In 2000 she voted against the repeal of Section 28. In 2001 and 2002, she voted against gays and lesbians being able to adopt. And in 2008 she voted against legislation which removed the need for a father in lesbians undergoing IVF treatment.”

Hardly a portfolio of someone who is supposed to be championing equality, is it? Lets also remember that she is in favour of cutting the abortion limit. No wonder Cameron has given her the Women and Equality ministerial position when she fits in with his views so nicely.

Something else that has sprung to mind, which I was actually going to blog the other day but is more relevant now, whilst Lynne Featherstone and Harriet Harman pledged their support to try to reduce the objectification caused by The Sun’s page 3, May said she would not. No prizes for guessing the obvious reason for why this may be the case, but despite Murdock’s Sun newspaper- there is obviously something fundamentally missing from May’s ability to be a firm promoter of women’s causes.

Whilst I would not advocate a banning of page 3, which I am sure the LibDems would not advocate, due to the damages it would do to liberal values – I think it is equally illiberal to have no real regulation over the newspaper. Instead, there should be adaption of the proposals to regulate The Sun and The Daily Sport in the same ways other sexually explicitly material are – this is what I think Harman and Featherstone meant when it came to tackling the paper.

As you might be able to tell, I am not best pleased with the cabinet selection. Women’s equality, I feel, will not be adequately promoted by only having under a handful of women cabinet ministers and an MP for Women and Equality who has an abysmal record on equality and women’s rights.

LibDem/Tory Coalition, aka. The iron hand in the velvet glove

So, it looks like its finally resolved. Brown’s gone. Cameron’s in. And LibDem’s have jumped into bed with the Tories. Oh dear. Yes, I can see why it may have happened. But as part of the more left-wing part of the party, I can never support a LibDem/Tory coalition. I genuinely think this is the start of a serious destruction of the LibDems. We are going to be seriously squeezed in the next election. Labour will replace us in the north – we have already lost control of councils such as Sheffield – and the Tories will replace us in the south.

We are going to be the soft face of a nasty government. But there again, how soft are we in practice? There have been reports that Labour, rightly, did not do a deal with us because we want more wide-ranging, deeper public services cuts – starting this year (whatever happened to Cable’s rejection of the Tories’ economic polices?). You can tell Clegg went into the Labour talks not wanting a deal, instead, they happened just to purely satisfy the members. Well, Clegg has made his choice. He will get his power, as rumour is it he will be deputy leader. But, he will lose a lot of the core. The core who have been so vigorously opposed to most of what the Tories stand for.

The LibDem MPs have been well whipped so far, but there will be defections. It will be interesting to see who does defect. You can tell that many of the more centre left MPs are grimmicing when they throw their ‘support’ behind the coalition proposals. Whilst it sounds promising that Tory policies such as inheritance tax has been put on ‘hold’, and they will look at implementing a compromised version of our tax reforms (“look at” and “compromised” is key here), I think that the fixed parliament reform, which was much-needed, will secure us into a long and painful death.

One thing we have to remember however, is that this was a real opportunity for PR wasted. We didn’t really push Labour far enough to try to get PR on a referendum – as I said, it was clear the leadership never really wanted to go with Labour. Instead, we will have to settle for AV, well a referendum on AV.

Regardless, I sense things to come for the LibDems may not be as rosy as the leadership may think and hope. When we come to important issues such as Europe, immigration, environment and higher education funding (will Clegg uncap the tuition fees and push his core membership even further away?), it is going to be very interesting to see how well the Tory whip is sustained across the LibDem MPs.

I hope I am wrong. I hope this coalition is good for the country, and the LibDems. But personally, I feel this will be nothing short of a disaster. Suffice to say, I don’t agree with Nick.

If LibDems support the Tories, it will top of a very demoralising election

Lets be frank, this is shaping up to be a rather demoralising election. Not only are our results nothing like what we expected, Clegg looks like he is going to pass up the chance for reforming our electoral system. Clegg’s argument that Cameron has more of a mandate seems hypocritical when you consider that the voting system has once again resulted in our vote share being a lot higher than our share of the MPs. We get around 7% less than Labour but end up with around 200 seats less than Labour – this is why electoral reform is so key.

I have talked to a few people who I managed to convince to vote LibDem – including my mum and my sister. After talking to them, and my own personal view, if the LibDems prop up a Tory government, I will feel ashamed to have argued that voting the LibDem’s would be a forceful anti Tory vote. Both my mum and sister have commented on how they wish they had voted Labour. These views, you will find, are pretty universal when considering Clegg’s cosey approach towards the Tories. If Clegg supports the Tories, this will seriously damage the party’s chances of becoming the ‘real’ progressive party in politics. You will see the rise of Labour, as people wont think the Liberal Democrats are any more committed to their central values than the other two parties.

It is not only the historical event of electoral reform that we will throw away, it is the ability to achieve economic stability. Vince Cable has already made it clear he is against the Tories budget, as are most sensible economically minded people. It appears as though Clegg is making economic deals the basis of the deal. Well then that shows how the ‘deal’ should be even more of a no brainer. Vince Cable has to be listened to, yes Clegg has gained popularity recently, but Cable is hugely respected and has warned about the dangers that the Tories’ economic policy would result in. It is rather interesting that Vince Cable seems to have vanished.

Hopefully, even if Clegg tries to pass this Tory deal the democratically structured LibDem party will reject it, as most of us are progressive left/centre minded people and would feel sick at the thought of supporting a party so ideologically in conflict with our values. Clegg really needs to think carefully before jumping into bed with Cameron. He needs to remember that he will not have a much better chance for political reform, he definitely would be able to get STV onto the referendum paper with Labour too. All he will get with the Tories is a Jenkins commission 2 – and I am of the understanding that thankfully this is a key area that is causing disagreement with talks between us and the Tories.

Speaking in general terms, we are obviously going to be disappointed with the election result, but at the same time I think we should be happy about the gains and the holds that we managed to achieve (Sarah Tether for example). I think the loss of Lembit Opik is a testament of many of the concerns that were voiced by people such as myself. My specific issue, as many of you know, was his attitudes towards women – especially his column within the Daily Sport where he often used patronising language to dehumanise women. I don’t think that writing in a ‘newspaper’ such as this really corresponds to fighting for the equality of women – I am not proposing for the abolition of porn etc but what he effectively was doing was undermining key areas of our campaign such as the Real Women campaign. Opik’s seat loss was more a personal not a political incident.

Clegg may think that the LibDems wont be tarnished if we don’t support the Tories in a formal coalition, instead just allowing them to have minority rule - but he should think again. He will have let so many people down who are ideologically committed to electoral reform, people who have switched from smaller parties to change the system for the better. People, including me, are going to wonder why they bothered for a party who were wiling to compromise all their values on the basis of a so called  ’mandate’ – even though it is important to highlight, no-one actually achieved a majority! We need to think again, or I am afraid, Clegg will see many of his supporters feeling rightly cheated – the Tories will destroy the lives of so many, and I, as I am sure most LibDems agree with, really do not want to be part of a positive endorsement of that!

‘Big Society’ Dangers

Labour’s ‘big society’ video is pretty well thought out. It is not the normal impersonal, direct political campaigning that you usual find with political broadcasts. Nevertheless, the humourist element of the video should not be taken lightly – there is a serious point that needs to be taken on here, something Labour have highlighted quite well.

The Tories’ ‘big society’ will result in nothing more than a reduction of necessary state functions, and an increase in services that are not reliant – as they depend on the ability and commitment of the community. Thus, services that are vital for some people’s livelihoods will be cut away, as the local services become increasingly subject to the market’s will - as another aspect of the ‘big society’ is profit, profit, profit for those selected interests that back the Tories.

It can sometimes sound very nice. Who doesn’t want a bit more control over their life? But devolving all aspects of responsiblity, so a school can become run from a shed (hypothetically of corse), is hardly going to give us any more control. In fact, it will reduce it.

This is the thing with the Tories. The ‘big society’ is just another gimmick, as is their ‘contracts’. Just another way to make a claim to be something ‘new’ and ‘exciting’. Fortunately, many people have not really been deceived - many people realise that there is a role for the state in helping provide for a fairer society. Yes, the state needs to be rolled back in areas where it attacks our civil liberties, but to decrease the state to the point where vital services become dependent on community provision, well that is a very dangerous situation indeed.

Two Cameron comments that particularly annoyed me

Whilst most things Cameron says annoys me, two of Cameron’s comments in the debate especially annoyed me.

Firstly, I strongly dislike the persistent attack on supposed ‘welfare scroungers’. As I have said before, the words used to explain those who commit white-collar crime (e.g bankers) aren’t as degrading and de-personalising as those used to explain the most vulnerable – who we must remember often fraud the system out of need, not want.

What scares me, is Cameron’s and the Tories’ persistent desire to attack those on incapacity benefit. The Tories’ lack of compassion will result in those who are unable to work because of a disability or illness etc, being forced or facing unfair pressure to go back into work. This threatens disabled people’s rights, and shows Cameron’s complete lack of regard for the different needs of people within society. Furthermore, it shows how much emphasis is placed on work, and how ideologically dangerous this sometimes can be. Most importantly, Cameron forgets that a lot of the time disabled people cannot work because of the disabling society, and thus, it is not the person that needs changing it is the system – but instead, Cameron will focus on the cheaper option of stigmatising people instead.

Another comment that angered me were Cameron’s views around ‘special schools’. I disagree with his position on special schools. Instead, we should be seeking reform and restructuring of the mainstream educational system so that schools are designed to allow for everyone to go to school irrespective of whether they are disabled or not. It is simply unacceptable to segregate disabled people and place them as ‘the other’.

To be fair, reforming this disabling society is something that all parties lack details on. The fact of the matter is that for them, it just costs too much. Instead, as I have said, they choose to make out that the problems are those of the disabled, instead of looking into the deep grained attitudinal and social barriers that prevent disabled people from work and educational experiences.

Conservatives: Here we go again, 1980s déjà vu…

David Cameron’s true colours shined through during his interview with Jeremy Paxman tonight. He made it pretty clear that he believed the 1980s inequality was justifiable and tolerable in order to achieve a ‘sustainable’ economy and growth. However, he then tried to claim that if he became Prime Minister now it would be somehow different when the Tories attempt to ‘sort’ the economy out. Let us unpick the illogicality and total inaccuracy of this claim.

Cameron’s emphasis in terms of improving the economy is growth, and it is clear he would do whatever it takes to reduce the deficit. He blamed the 1980s inequality on the legacy of Labour, but in the same interview, he referred to how we have borrowed more in this current recession than we did in 1976 when we went to IMF, part of what he has attributed as the reason for the massive inequality within the 1980s.

So what is the difference? It is exactly the same situation, if not worse. Like in the 1980s the Tories neglected inequality for their ideological aims to an unfair neo liberal economy, they will do it again if they are elected. All their policies are inherently unfair and do nothing to promote inequality, as Paxman cleverly highlighted.

Take marriage tax, Paxman enlightened me further about the inequality and out of dated nature of that policy. I was unaware that when one of the partners stays home they are able to claim the tax benefit. This is Thatcher 2. Whilst furthering the economy through unequal aims, they also want to promote some ‘ideal’ nuclear family.

There is very little that has changed from the 1980s Conservative party and the ‘modern’ day Cameron party. If we elect Cameron, we will be greeted with a great deal of inequality that will destroy the lives of many. Let us not make the same mistake we made in the 1980s…

Brown and Cameron’s failing marriage

Most polls are reporting that Clegg was the clear winner from the TV debate tonight, and rightly so – Clegg was the only one (as usual) to answer the questions whilst the other two leaders bickered with each other as though they are in a failing marriage. Brown consistently addressed Cameron, making out that it is a Labservative election. Wrong, as shown by the feedback tonight, this is a three party race.

As Clegg remarked:

“the more they attack each other, the more they sound exactly the same”

Brown and Cameron really showed their true colours, for one – they both lied. For example, take recall; they are both promising it now, but both the Tories and Labour failed to support the LibDem’s bill so that recall would have been available for the public NOW! The same goes for political reform. We know about Cameron’s lack of commitment to political reform, but there was Brown again, trying to strike a claim that they are the party to vote for to initiate political reform. Well, how about the last 13 years? If you cared about that so much, why haven’t you done so when you had the chance?

Whilst Brown was orienting his comments towards Cameron, I think both Cameron and Brown need to be aware of the rightful recognition Nick Clegg is gaining and will get in the last remaining days of this election – the LibDems are not a wasted vote!

The day the right showed their true colours on gay equality…

Yesterday’s comments by Nick Griffin and David Cameron in regards to gay equality:

Nick Griffin:

“It’s unfamiliar, it’s odd and I’m afraid it is creepy. Grown men kissing in public is creepy to most people. You don’t often see it but if you do see it, it’s not a matter of homophobia, it’s odd and you have to explain it to little kids and so on – that’s strange. We’re not anti-gay. I took over a party which had a total ban on homosexual members. We’ve got gay members now and people know who they are, but it’s don’t ask don’t tell.”

David Cameron:

“I try to have free votes where possible on these sorts (in this instance, gay rights) of issues. Sorry it’s not a very good answer. I’ll have to go and look at this particular vote in the European parliament.”

Both comments are striking and revealing in their different ways. Nick Griffin’s are simply unbelievable, how a man who calls homosexuals ‘creepy’ can then assert that he is not homophobic, or can claim that a party whose gay members are put in a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation is not homophobic, really shows how out of touch the BNP are. To claim the BNP are not homophobic as they now allow gay people to become members is absurd, it is the same as saying that the BNP would cease to be racist if they changed their constitution – it wont.

Furthermore, stopping homophobia is more than just providing gay people access to membership; a party’s policies, attitudes and values towards homosexuals is vital to challenging homophobia within society. However, an examination of the BNP’s policies around homosexuality illustrates how engrained homophobia is within their party. For example, they want to re-install section 28, by banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Furthermore, they want to ban civil partnerships, which incidentally Griffin attrubutes as a left-wing conspiracy:

“…it’s part of the left’s war against marriage and the family. I find it hard to grasp people who are essential conservative with a small c who can’t get the point that most of what’s been done to our society been deliberately done by a hard core Marxist left who have infiltrated their ideas into all aspects of our society.”

Well here is a left attack on the right. This is nothing to do with some sort of conspiracy to erode some ‘ideal’, instead it is about furthering people’s liberty to choose for themselves what type of relationship they want to be in, and to respect that we are living in an increasingly fragmented and individualised society. It is ”the cause of the left” , as Griffin puts it, to further equality in society and through this there has to be recognition of all forms of commitment, and that includes civil partnership (which rightly, as Clegg has said, should be marriage).

Now onto Cameron. What was the most striking about Cameron’s slip up was his remarks around free votes.  I have to agree with Ben Bradshaw’s analysis of Cameron: whilst Cameron has a memorised homosexual rights ‘script’, when it is scrutinised, Cameron does not have the core beliefs needed to maintain it. Channel 4′s short documentary on Cameron’s interview with Gay Times illustrated the hypocrisy of Cameron’s remarks. After the interview, Cameron tried to justify the free votes that he said MEPs have, arguing that they wanted to remain outside other countries’ internal affairs, but Channel 4 highlighted how the Tories tabled an amendment on press freedom in Italy a month after the Lithuania vote. In the interview he also slipped up as he remarked on MPs access to free votes on “these sorts of issues”, but then he conceded he had no valid justification for this remark.

Both Cameron and Griffin are different obviously. However, what both demonstrated yesterday is how both parties still need to improve their views around homosexual equality. It is not unfair to say that the Tories’ MEPs show very close similarities to Griffin’s BNP. Nor is it unfair to say that many Tory MPs, MEPs and peers would not find themselves out-of-place within the BNP in terms of their homosexual beliefs.

Conservative and radical?

Cameron’s suggestion that the Tories are a ‘radical’ and ‘modern’ party may seem slightly off the mark when considering the meaning of Conservative and its apparent opposition to radical. However, maybe the Tories’ are radical, that is radically regressive? Maybe Cameron is right, his party is radical - radically objectionable to the real changes in society and thus, radically backwards.

For example, ‘Broken Britain’ and its associated arguments such as their belief in supporting some sort of ‘ideal’ family type is based on an assumption that there needs to be a radical revolution of morality in society. In order to create the conditions for this to actually work and for people to readily promote and accept the idea, their needs to be a radical regressive restructuring of the society we live in so it reflects the pre 1960 era where minorities (sexual minorities, for example) and individual choice were readily discouraged as it was seen as ‘peversive’ and ‘unnatural’.

This ‘radical’ regressive attitude of Cameron needs to be exposed within part of a Libdem counter-narrative to Broken Britain, which is something I have touched on before. We need to play Cameron at his own game, his adoption of loaded and soundbite fitting concepts such as broken and radical need to be reclaimed. Libdems need to invert Cameron’s conception of the terms, we need to show what is really broken in politics – such as the electoral system, and how Cameron’s conception of social breakdown is a reflection of his so-called radical approach that instead of being positively progressive is negatively regressive.

Cameron on homophobia: Cultural ‘magic’ dust, lies and more…

What a contrast. A few weeks ago, Clegg announced a very competent set of policies that address the inequalities that homosexuals still face. Whilst Cameron does support the law that would enable asylum seekers to settle here if they are fleeing prosecution because of their sexual orientation, he is less committed to removing the ban that stops homosexuals and bisexuals from giving blood due to the scare of AIDS. Instead, he says that he has to wait for a report to decide whether we can remove the ban. Why does he need a report to see how wrong the ban is? It is pretty obvious that there is no scientific basis to it – it is just pure homophobia. All the blood is screened anyway, heterosexuals have many AIDS’ sufferers too. It is pretty simple, as Clegg showed, the ban should be removed.

When it comes to the issue of homophobic violence, the old let some ‘magical’ cultural change dust do the work instead of the state was employed in his discourse. Cultural change is fundamental, however, it only works as long as there is a means of achieving it. I am always bemused when people use the ‘magical’ cultural change argument in response to those who desire state action to help bring about that cultural change. Yes, legislation is not the answer to all change, however, it is a big part in assisting cultural change. There has to be a method behind mobilising change, just simply talking about it does little.

The article by Johann Hari that this blog is based on has an interesting point around faith schools too, this is something that Nick Clegg should take into account before imposing homosexual teaching in faith schools. There is a lot of research that shows that if the Tories idea of giving money to those who want to run their own schools was implemented, mainly religious groups and fundamentalists would take up the offer, who are most likely to be homophobic. Thus, policies by the Tories, as well as their inability to state how they would achieve cultural change, would actually appear to run the risk of making homophobic violence worse.

As stated previously in my blog, it is important to remember the history of Cameron’s attitude and voting record towards homosexual rights, especially in terms of Section 28. No matter what apology he issues now, you always have to doubt his pro homosexual rights rhetoric when considering that he was an avid supporter of the Section and other anti homosexual laws, even as late as 2008. LabourList have a nice little piece on Cameron’s voting record on homosexual rights that further illustrates the doubts one must have when viewing the dramatic ‘change’ in position Cameron has made of late in terms of his stance towards homophobia.

His answers on Europe show how little he really cares about homosexual rights. He tries to claim that whilst they do not agree with their new European partners extreme views on homosexuals (which is debatable), it is the price to pay for:

“an open, flexible, trading Europe, rather than the endless progress towards a more federalised Europe”.

He, nor the Tories, will ever truly change…