We were kidding ourselves if we thought a female prime minister was going to change Westminster’s sexist culture
Whips go through a weekly run down of who has been using prostitutes, who has a sex addiction, who is having an affair and who is predatory towards females
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Your support makes all the difference.Theresa May is certainly making all the correct noises today over Westminster’s handsy, bad-in-taxis, sexual harassment problem. In a letter to John Bercow, May talks of a need for new systems, and this time “with teeth”. May’s suggestions to Bercow come after demands from Labour MPs John Mann and Sarah Champion that staff be able to report abuse or harassment to an independent authority. MPs have warned that young staff are being made vulnerable by late working hours and the fact that many politicians lead a double life – with one home in London and another in their constituency.
Sadly, by “with teeth” May is not literally doling out day passes to angry mothers of parliamentary interns in order for them to bite the sex pests firmly on their fat necks then shake them about like wronged lionesses. More’s the pity, I say, as forgive me, I’m weary of tweaked systems and earnest recommendations.
These mooted plans for stricter procedures to quash lechery and boys-being-boys sound fine, but I’ve heard it all before. And for many of these grubby, entitled blots on masculinity a more visceral warning is needed. I’d respect May more if she gave the green light to a no questions asked bollock-kicking policy and then extended it out to all media organisations, record companies, hospitality venues and sporting bodies. Because Westminster is not a unique hot bed of sinister sex pests – it is merely a microcosm of how life is for women in traditionally male-dominant workplaces.
To me, May’s suggestion of a new mediation service and grievance procedure sounds like the usual placating flim-flam women hear whenever entrenched misogyny is laid bare. Has the local football team been gang-banging drunken teenage girls and filming it? What we all need is an enquiry. And definitely more systems. Not firing anyone, god forbid.
What? There’s a culture of men targeting female employees and swapping revenge porn in your workplace? Well what we need is an independent body to report grievances. He should get a small slap on the wrist and a week-long company sponsored sex addiction course. I have heard all this toothless chat before. If May had any teeth herself, she’d fire some people.
We learned over the weekend that May is given a regular briefing by Tory Chief Whip Gavin Williamson on the misdemeanours of all of her MPs. It’s said this is called “the ins and outs” chat. I feel confident that the headlines of this weekly briefing will mirror the themes and recurring characters in the now legendary Westminster women’s WhatsApp group. Consternation over this WhatsApp group and the sleepless nights it must be causing several parliamentary figures is rather delicious. Men like these, who see fifty per cent of the world as a one-off conquest, a part-time mistress or a self-soothing device, well, they absolutely despise women talking to each other.
Men who spend their entire lives in bad faith with their wives, lying to cover lies, dogs with two d***s chasing their own tails, nothing terrifies them more than women sharing their truths, overriding their shame and uniting.
But whatever is in that WhatsApp group it is certainly the sort of gossip May has sat through many times before. It has been reported that whips go through a weekly run down of who has been using prostitutes, who has a sex addiction, who is having affairs and who is predatory towards females. The list lacks any differentiation in the levels of graveness. It’s all just day to day miscellaneous bantz of British parliament.
One aide told a journalist, “Theresa just sits there and doesn’t say much”. On one occasion she apparently said, “Why can’t they just do their job?” Well, quite, Theresa. But as I’m sure she knows, the women in Parliament are working four times harder to be taken a quarter as seriously, which leaves more than a little downtime for the men to have fun.
What is certain, is that Theresa May has a unique opportunity as a modern female Prime Minister to make some somewhat Draconian changes in order to quash sexism. Diane Abbot claims to have seen little progress in the past three decades. “There was harassment, there were jokes which weren’t that funny – it was partly to do with the fact it was a very male environment – 650 MPs, when I went there just 20-odd women”, Abbot says, explaining her first years at Westminster. “It was partly to do with the idea of all these men away from home, it was partly to do with the fact there were eight bars and the very long hours and the bars were open for as long as we’re sitting, and partly with the notion that what happens in Westminster stays in Westminster. It was worse – it’s a little bit better now – but there’s a long way to go.”
From where I’m standing, the road doesn’t feel any shorter.
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