What if there are no female Lib Dem MPS left?!!!?

Yesterday we went to a lunch party and the conversation turned to the electoral prospects of the fifty odd Lib Dem MPs and how many the LIb Dems may lose if you believe Peter Kellner's prediction at the Lib Dem Conference Fringe in Glasgow this year that the Lib Dems are going to become a party with around 10% of the vote in future years and gone for some time are the heady days when we can count on 20% of the vote. Of course, Peter Kellner may be wrong and it may not be that bad but I do think not to at least countenance such a drop in support at a General Election would be a tad over optimistic.

It was pretty depressing listening and looks like it would leave us with a grand total of zero female Lib Dem MPs. A parliamentary party that is 100% male and 100% white. Wow!  And given the inroads that Labour and the Tories have been making in recent years to increase their numbers of women MPs you'd have to conclude that a collapse in the LIb Dem vote will result in a better gender balanced House of Commons.

The thought of belonging to a political party that has no female representation in the Commons, well...I don't think it's really sunk in.  I find it shocking and then just angry when I think of all the opportunities that we've had to put women into our least vulnerable seats (Eastleigh, anyone?) and for various reasons didn't.  Because something else was always more important, that we just had to win this one, go for a safe bet of a candidate, go for someone local, wait another year or so, or whatever other reason that has been given as to why now is not quite the time to finally start delivering on real equality of power in the party.

And now? And now it looks like it's a little bit too late because the few women that the LIb Dems do have are in the most marginal and vulnerable of seats and they will likely be gone. Oh, yes, it is so very hard to increase the number of women when you're losing seats, isn't it?  Except that the LIb Dems could have seen it coming, we could have mitigated against the risk by making sure we had women in safe seats (Eastleigh, again, anyone?) even years ago when we were on our winning streak.  'Cos lets face it, if you don't sort this stuff out when you're on your winning streak, then you sure as hell aren't going to sort it out when you'reheading for the new electoral landscape that we seem to be.

Yet no one, no one in a position of leadership has done anything that has made a blind bit of difference, not once, in the 15 years I've been a member of the Liberal Democrats, the 10 years or so that I've been active and the 6 odd years that I've been writing about the lack of equality in female representation (and power) in the Liberal Democrats. Lots of good words and hand wringing but no actual action.

The Liberal Democrats have lost so many good female activists over the Rennard debacle and sidelined others when they could have chosen to give them safe seats in by-elections. And what are these women doing now? Well, because so many of them are really good people they're off doing new and exciting things: leading the organisations they work for, sitting on the boards of major campaigning organisations, being fast tracked in their career, etc, etc because they're good.  Good people have choices and they're not going to hang around where they don't seem to be wanted just waiting until the party gets around to thinking that equality of power includes it's female members as well as the voting public.

So come June next year, when the party sits surveying more lost councillors and many lost parliamentary constituencies and the likely probability of no female MPs, will that be enough to kick it into action on gender equality? I am not holding out much hope. Why would the mixture of complacency and incompetence that has been the hallmark of the party when it comes to gender representation to date change? Because, you know what the priority will be? To win seats back and we'll all just have to be pragmatic about it, won't we? And gender equality will, like all the other markers of power imbalance in Liberal Democrat MPs, be required to take a back seat until we're back in the race again. Or when we get Proportional Representation. Or something. Just as long is we understand that now is not quite the time.

 This post was originally posted on my lifestyle blog Could Do Better; head over if you like your politics and feminism interrupted by posts of food, parenting and other stuff.

Our Lib Dem Democratic Deficit

I am on the whole delighted today; amazed that a man, whom I knew had something good going for him from the moment I met him, that I drove about for a day in the back of my car during his party leadership campaign, is now Deputy Prime Minster. I suspect both car and driver have improved in quality somewhat! Well done, Nick! Hooray!

However, there is one big fly in the ointment for me and that is what looks to be like the lack of women in this new coalition government. An historic, new type of government and it’s still white, middle class men taking almost every plum job. The exception, as just announced is Theresa May, who seems to have two jobs Home Secretary and Women and Equalities. That to me, suggests that she’s the going to be the only female cabinet minster; let’s hope I’m wrong.

Oh dear!

Of course, you can’t put many more women into the Cabinet if you don’t have enough female MPs in the first place.

The number of Conservative female MPs has gone up but the number of Labour and Lib Dem female MPs has gone down. The only new female Liberal Democrat MP that we have is the wonderful Tessa Munt. However, Tessa has been standing for election for many, many years, starting off in the Ipswich by-election in 2001. So, it has to be said that despite the very best efforts of the Campaign for Gender Balance and Women Liberal Democrats that we have made no progress, in terms of outcomes in getting new women into parliament.

And you can’t get more women into parliament if you don’t have enough female PPCs in the first place. We didn’t even manage to get more women standing as PPCs: only 22% in 2010, compared to 23% in 2005.

Of course, the issues in why we don’t have more women as PPCs are structural – politics does not fit with the reality of many women’s lives, let alone that the whole thing seems to be a testosterone fuelled slanging match. Plus, the way to progress through the Liberal Democrats and get to the point that you can stand in a serious seat, also discourages many other potential female PPCs. We make a difficult journey, even more difficult!

I know that all PPCs make sacrifices and compromises; but I rather suspect that there are more compromises to be made by women, especially those with young families. Their male counterparts don’t have it easy, just easier.

This is a real shame as our policies that impact women are really good and we have made definite progress there.

As Ceri Goddard from the Fawcett Society said in the Guardian at the end of April:

"They have the most radical proposals of all the parties on issues such as equal pay audits and parental leave, but they haven't acknowledged the huge democratic deficit – their radicalism doesn't extend to challenging the status quo."

Nick Clegg has given us another election to sort it out; I hope that we don’t need another election I hope we get to grips with the fact that ‘encouragement’ and ‘training’ is not going to change the game and am sure that we will need to be far more radical in addressing this problem than we have ever been so far!

Posted via web from jochristiesmith's posterous

It's equality not growth that makes the difference..

I went to an excellent garden party at Hackney Liberal Democrats yesterday afternoon where I learnt that there is solid data that supports the notion that unequal societies are worse for everybody, whether the Lib Dems narrative does or doesn't support that and not to attempt to drive in London on a Sunday. Ever.

Geoffrey J Payne (as opposed to Geoff Payne) is very good at putting together the most interesting speaking events and he had invited Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, the author of 'the Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better' and my husband*, Neil Stockley, on the extent to which the Lib Dems current narrative is one of equality. Neil will be putting what he had to say about our narrative (the upshot being our narrative is not really one of equality, even though our policies support one) on his blog in the next few days.

If you haven't had a look a The Spirit Level yet, I thoroughly recommend you do you can buy it here (via the Lib Dem affinty scheme) or here: especially if you're of the persuasion that it's growth that counts and that as long as those at the top are continuing to get wealthier it will improve things for everybody (i.e. especially if you are a Tory).

It doesn't.

In fact key things that I took from the talk were:

1. Once you get past a certain amount of wealth (ie. where the richest, most developed countries already are) increased growth makes no difference to overall well being (life expectancy, imprisonment rates etc, etc).
2. That increased equality means greater well being, not just for the poorest in society but for the richest. So the rich in more equal societies are better off (or rather, have increased levels of well being) than the rich in less equal societies, even though they may not have as much money or purchasing power as the rich in more unequal societies.
3. The UK is doing really badly and massive increased expenditure hasn't made that much difference.
4. So is New Zealand...

Don't just take my word for it - go and have a look at the Equality Trust and look at the stats - they're compelling, to say the least.

*novelty value of saying or writing 'my husband' has yet to wear off; perhaps it never will!!