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.

Rochester and UKIP

Well, one thing is clear: with 349 votes and a lost deposit, the Liberal Democrats are no longer the party of protest.  Of course, they're not, because they are a party of government and the junior partner in the coalition.  What is happening to the Lib Dem vote is highly predictable and no surprise - look at countries like New Zealand where coalition politics is the norm and see what happens to the junior partners.
As a number of people have mentioned this morning on Twitter, at least we know who the core, against all the odd, support is in Rochester - all of whom have shown enough commitment to make them excellent members! Alternatively, it looks like the candidate managed to get his Facebook friends out to vote for him and not many others.  Still, what a thankless task it, to be a Lib Dem by-election candidate these days.

So, looking at Liberal Democrat history to provide a model of a party coming from nowhere into Government, UKIP are cock a hoop.  A party of protest, ridiculed and patronised by mainstream parties builds first one, then two, then enough seats to fill a car eventually where they are holding the balance of power in a coalition government and KER-CHOW!! (as Lightning McQueen might say) our membership of the EU is binned in spectacular fashion.  Or perhaps even the threat of UKIP holding the balance of power is enough to get the Tories to come up with the idea of binning the EU themselves.

If we buy the proposition that this is not just normal by-election sabre rattling by the electorate and this really is the first steps towards a completely new political landscape then UKIPs new supporters, drawn from all the mainstream parties should be aware that Nigel Farage is no man of the people, he is drawn from the same establishment pool as all those other establishment politicians that the public love to pour scorn on.  His alma mater is Dulwich College, one of the top nine private schools in the country with a reputation for producing, like Eton and Westminster, political leaders.  He is a very talented communicator whom we should be very wary of because UKIP polices are really very nasty. It's not just immigration and the EU, they want to bring in a form of workfare, withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees, increase military spending by 40%  and create a national curriculum which is pro imperialist and denies climate change.  The reason they are always having to apologise for their candidates is not that they pick the wrong ones, it's because their candidates are actually reflecting UKIP beliefs about the sort of country we want to be.

So, I am hopeful that this is not a new dawn of politics and that UKIP will not be able to follow the Liberal Democrat model into Government because , with the exception of the Tuition Fees debacle (which should never, ever have been a Liberal Democrat policy, let alone a key pillar of the campaign) the Liberal Democrats have policies which have been opened up to proper scrutiny; some people like them and some people hate them but we know what they are not least because the have been written down.  But we know very little about UKIP policy, which changes on the whim of Nigel Farage and that when looked at more closely, favour the rich and invincible and do very little to help the type of people who are voting for them now.  I think we should let UKIP have their day in the sun and know that when placed under scrutiny the British voter will see them for what they are.

This post was updated on Sunday 23rd NOvember 2014, with some extra links and some editing of text.

A new organisation for Women

Yesterday, I attended the wind up of Women Liberal Democrats and the inaugural meeting of Liberal Democrat Women; and whilst it may sound like the most semantic of all name changes, there is indeed a real change in the organisation as a result.

For a start, it is not so much a name change as a merger of the two groups that promoted the role of women. The Campaign for Gender Balance (CFGB), a top down organisation appointed by the Federal Executive, is no more but the activities that it undertook are within the scope of the new organisation, including a report to conference.  A report to conference that always seems to be timed for the fewest number of people to attend, but a valuable voice for women in the party none the less.

What is left is a group of women, keen to engage with the party on issues that affect all of us, not just women, but at the same time are issues that affect women in a different way to the way they affect men and to make sure that 'other' voice is heard.  Following an all member survey, key areas to campaign on have been identified and a number of working groups are being set up to ensure those campaigns succeed.

Of course, women in the Liberal Democrats have a wide variety of views and experiences, just as all Liberal Democrats do and identity politics (which this is) is a difficult horse for us as liberals to ride.  But, we're not just liberals, we are also democrats and so, we have to make sure that this campaigning organisation gives a voice for women in the party who are not a minority but so often absent from the debates.

I know that all the activists, male and female, that have gone abroad, to places such as the US and New Zealand have been amazed to see how women organise within political parties to become a caucus that cannot just be ignored as they often are in the Liberal Democrats.

If we do not organise, then we will not be heard.  Those that want to hear the voice of Liberal Democrat women will have no one to go and ask or to speak to.  Just last week when parliament marked the centenary of Emily Davidson, militant suffragette, throwing herself under a horse at the Epsom Derby, there was NO Liberal Democrat speaker!  A stitch up by the Labour and Tory organisers perhaps but also a sympton of a lack of organisation by Liberal Democrat parliamentarians.  I understand that women parliamentarians are now looking to meet and organise themselves into a group to ensure this kind of thing does not happen again.

In the mean time, the newly constituted Liberal Democrat Women, has opened nominations for their first ever Executive. Nomination forms need to be in by 2pm on Friday 5th July 2013.  If you are interested in standing for Election for the Liberal Democrat Women Executive (you need to be either a member of the old Women Liberal Democrats or to have joined Liberal Democrat Women by the 14th June 2013) then I believe the person to email for more info is Roxana Cimpeanu at LDHQ (020 7227 1319 roxana.cimpeanu@libdems.org.uk).

I really enjoyed meeting my fellow (!!) Liberal Democrat Women in Birmingham yesterday - there was a complete range of ages and experiences that bodes very well for us but also a great deal of energy and enthusiasm for the challenges ahead.

I will post more on the working groups shortly when I have found all the contact details etc.

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

Is this really a once in a generation opportunity?

It's very hard for us LIb Dems and those who are desperate, let's face it, for full scale political reform to feel that, as it has been our first chance to use our position as a pivot party in 34 years that it will be our last chance to use our position as a pivot party for the next 24 years.  The instinct therefore is to refuse to go into a coalition unless we get a promise of a referendum; unless we finally get what we were supposed to have got 13 years ago, if only Labour hadn't reneged on the deal.

Of course, that would be the best outcome.  But it's a very hard ask of the Tory negotiating team and we should be looking to see what package of measures could still halt this stitch up between Labour and the Conservative in its track.  It may be that one hung parliament isn't enough but two might be.

The eminent constitutionalist David Butler has oft suggested that transformational voting reform could take two hung parliaments to achieve, two consecutive hung parliaments. 

Although we haven't had a hung parliament for a long time, that may not be the case in the future.

Over the last 50 years there has been a consistent decline in people voting for either Labour and Conservative, from 97% in 1951 culminating with less that two thirds of voters in the 2010 election.  This means that hung parliaments are for more likely in the future.

Of course, the problem is that where the Prime Minister can, within a few parameters, can hold a General Election at a time of their choosing they will of course try and pick the point where a hung parliament is least likely.

But what would happen if the Conservatives agreed to fixed term parliaments? Well, the PM would no longer be able to manage the timing in their favour and hung parliaments would, on top of the psephological changes already working in favour of hung parliaments, again become more frequent.

The dynamics of election calling tactics would be changed forever.

I think we should go for as much as we can get;  I think we need more that just fixed term parliaments but I also think that political reform that provides an environment to create that second hung parliament leading to electoral reform is quite a prize and we should be wary of walking away from it.

I worry that all those who want electoral reform seem to be equating the Liberal Democrats raison d'etre with voting reform; while important we are not a one policy party.  It is unlikely however, that without a healthy vibrant Liberal Democrats that we will ever get voting reform as Labour's commitment to it comes and goes in line with their proximity to power.  So, do not make the Liberal Democrats succeed or fall on this one negotiation and this one election.

A coalition with the Tories, would allow us to reign in the worst excesses of conservatism, in all sorts of policy areas including political reform and if set up for a relatively long period help create the economic stability that this country needs.  Making a coalition work, on Britain's journey towards proportional representation, is as important as the concessions that we win from that coalition.

Coalition governments are risky in many other ways for support parties, whether or not their in it for constitutional reform, but could bring enormous benefits to the people of the United Kingdom; I'm not normally the type to be patient but I think that all of us who want a proportional voting system should look to the long game and not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

 

 

 

Posted via web from jochristiesmith's posterous

Helping the Tories deliver...

If Benedict Brogan's report on the offer to Tory MPs of a free vote in parliament on an Electoral Reform referendum is true then that is a neat piece of work done by the joint negotiation teams.

Not only does the Lib Dem team have to ensure that the Liberal Democrats get what they want in return for a formal coalition with the Conservatives (I might have to stop calling them the Tories, I fear, as to me at least, it's a pejorative term) but they have to do as much as they can to help the Conservatives deliver a deal that is palatable to their own party.

At first glance, the parliamentary maths suggests that this is a bit of a pig in a poke, as Tories and pro FPTP Labour MPs could vote down any legislation to run a referendum but that ignores the payroll vote. 

This of course would only work for the LIb Dems if Cameron made government jobs dependant on support for a referendum - allowing those Tory MPs who feel sooo strongly about PR to follow their conscience whilst allowing other Tory MPs to follow their career.

It would also give groups such a Power2010 to ramp up the campaign and ensure a national conversation.  They already have the momentum as I don't see any keep FPTP demonstrations going on!

 

Posted via web from jochristiesmith's posterous

The path to a people's parliament

Just over two weeks ago, I sat in the LBC 97.3 studios in Leicester Square being told by the very jolly Tory Bear that the Lib Dems were irrelevant!  Well, not so irrelevant now, are they Mr Bear?!!

That was at the height of Tory complacency about the election, the night before the first debate after which it became clear to everyone that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems if given a fair hearing are a force to be reckoned with.

There is so much excitement about the new politics.  There is, at the moment a feeling that everything could all be about to change, that the two party duopoly has gone for good.

Of course, the desire for a more representative parliament delivered through a proportional voting system isn't the sole preserve of Liberal Democrats; there are Labour, Green and even a few Tory supporters that believe in it.  But the path to such a people's parliament will be a long one and we will all have to adapt the way we do politics to it.

Balanced parliament means political parties have work together; so we are going to have to set aside our tribal loyalties, learn to breath without our nose pegs and be prepared to talk to anybody. Yes, even Tories perhaps or maybe even Gordon Brown (breathe 1, 3, 3 ,4, breathe, 1,2,3,4..scary thought, I know)

Balanced parliaments and coalitions are about creating outcomes, not throwing your toys out of the pram because you can't bear the idea of your political enemies benefiting in any way.

So, allow Nick, who has done us all so proud in the last few weeks to do his stuff.  Don't tell him now what he can and can't do a deal with; don't tell him who he should and shouldn't talk to. 

And stop going on about the triple lock! Crikey, I like the fact that the Liberal Democrats are a democratic party as much as the next Lib Dem but it is only a fall back position. For it to be invoked there would have to be a massive split in the parliamentary party and I think it's highly unlikely that there will be a split in the parliamentary party around who to talk to in the event of a parliament with no overall majority.

Any political geek who thinks she or he's going to have a direct influence on any coalition agreements is, well, over-egging their part in the pudding.

Every leader has to take his (or hopefully one day, her) party with them when negotiating with other parties.  The triple lock is just a formalisation of what all three of the Leaders will have to do.  Neither Cameron or Brown would be able to get very far without the support of their parliamentary party.

After all, have you not noticed that Nick has already set out what the terms of negotiation will be via his four priorities?

He's set out the terms of any negotiations and set the red line which cannot be crossed of electoral reform as his backstop. 

Not one of us knows what the electoral map and mathematics are going to look like come May 7th, so stop speculating and let Nick get on with what he is doing brilliantly: holding his and the party's nerve for another week!

Go Nick!!

 

 

 

Posted via web from jochristiesmith's posterous

Life with the LIb Dems in Government

Liberalism is at root an optimistic philosophy, free from the fear that Conservatism seeks to propagate.

It's Lib Dem Manifesto Day and here it is!



OK, the width of the video choice bit doesn't fit my template but hey, I should understand how to change the code so that it does!

Obviously I'm all for our 4 key priorities but I lurve the manifesto page on the website, I'm off to find out how to download the video onto my iPhone!

Real Women and Real Cultural Change

I'm down in Bournemouth for the conference and have just spent the morning perfecting a speech in the Real Women Policy Debate this afternoon.

It looks like it's going to be a debate over subscribed with speakers and there's at least 3 amendments and a separate vote!

Here are links to the policy paper itself and conference extra which has the amendment 2 to I speaking against.

I'm definitely in favour of the motion, and hoping to speak against Amendment 2 in particular - so here is my speech, just in case I don't get to give it!

Friends,

I am delighted to support this innovative and practical policy paper, because it re affirms our commitment to freedom, choice and true liberal values.

But Amendment Two would undermine that commitment.

If we pass this amendment, we’ll be saying :

‘We see there’s a problem with media images, body image and eating disorders but we don’t want to do anything about it, except to cross our fingers and hope that the problem will go away all by itself’.

What sort of policy is that?

Let’s be clear: images of women are manipulated in advertising in order to make more sales and revenue for large corporations.

Where that harms people, liberals must take positive action.

Time and time again over the past decade, research has shown that from as early as age 5 young girls feel under pressure to be slim and have a perfect body.

The publication ‘Under ten and Under Pressure’ , put out by the Girl Guides Association – that bastion of radical feminism! - found that ‘Girls Between Seven and Ten Believe being Slim and Pretty Makes you Clever, Happy and Popular’

In research by Field et al in 1999, nearly 2 in 3 of 500 girls aged between 9 and 17 agreed with the statement “pictures of women in magazines influence what you think is the perfect shape”

And 1 in 2 of the girls agreed that “Pictures of women in magazines make you want to lose weight.

The policy paper addresses this harm in a thoroughly liberal way, by providing consumers with information on how much images have been digitally manipulated; so that people can know how real or fake they are.

We’ve supported this kind of consumer empowerment before.

To help mitigate the harm of climate change we have laws requiring manufacturers to provide us with information about how energy efficient their fridges are.

Yes, the issues are complicated but now there is a simple set of categories.

So we are all empowered to make an informed choice about energy efficiency.

Yes, the process of airbrushing may also be complex.

Yet, it is entirely possible to come up with some useful guidelines.

Commonsense would ensure that what was being regulated was the manipulation of body images, not the benign change of lighting or removal of shadows.

And, just as the labelling of fridges has changed the behaviour of fridge manufacturers, so the labelling of digitally manipulated images will change the behaviour of advertisers.

What we’re talking about here is cultural change ; changing behaviours.

One reason digital manipulation works is that we don’t always know when it's been done.

If we make sure that advertisers are open and honest about it, what company will want to admit that the only way it can sell it’s products is by using fake pictures?

But if you don’t require advertisers to provide the information in the first place, you don’t get the cultural change we need.

They will have no incentive to change.

As advertising drives the profitability of magazines, newspapers and television, where they go, editorial will follow.

We didn’t cross our fingers and hope for cultural change when it came to energy efficiency of fridges, why should we do it about the well-being and self-esteem of young women and girls?

Conference, this is a liberal approach to achieving cultural change!

Yes, if a five year old is reading Cosmo then she will see digitally manipulated photos.

but if her parents choose to protect her, they will know where the safe places are.

So, Cosmo Girl, aimed directly at the teen market should help young women feel good about themselves; they shouldn’t decide they’re fat at the age of 12!

Conference, let’s make a real difference to young girls and women’s lives:

Support the motion and reject amendment two.

Bar the gates to parliament and don't let them out until they've sorted it!

I am very excited about Nick's reforms published in the Guardian today! Especially because they include a week by week plan of action - which is what change professional like me really get off on!

So, here's a challenge to the Tories - if you're so reformist, then why not join the calls for reform in 100 days, real reform, not just tinkering around the edges like Cameron's plans do?

More later, no doubt but I've got to dash now....

Politics by candlelight

On Saturday night I was invited down to Horsham constituency (which bizarrely now includes my home village of Copthorne within its boundaries) to talk on my favourite topic of diversity.

I went down there, a little nervous, as I know that my thoughts on this topic are sometimes a little radical for many Lib Dems (although not Shirley Williams); however, I was incredibly heartened by the response that I got and in particular the views of women who had actually been councillors, PPCs or were potential candiates etc. I wonder sometimes that this debate is often prematurely stifled by our collective horror at some of the implications of positive discrimination but in Horsham there was a very open debate and much of what I talked about seemed to resonate with them.

Of course, there may have been lots of people sitting there thinking 'what a load of rubbish' and to polite to say and there were people who challenged parts of what I was saying, but I did not get mauled! I met lots of lovely people and even sat opposite someone at dinner (in candlelight because of Earth Hour) that I had unwittingly been at school with!

I came away full of pride and affection for my home county of West Sussex!

So here is the speech - I also spoke in candlelight because of earth hour, which was a challenge, and added in the odd anecdote or exclamation! So it's not verbatim.

I don’t know how many of you managed to get to Harrogate at the beginning of the month but we had a great speech from Howard Dean. He talked about the Democratic party becoming once again a national party and he said:

“If wanted to be a national party, we had to look like a national party’

So how do we Lib Dems, do?

Only 9 out of our 63 MPs are women.

We have no ethnic minority MPs.

Only 2 out of our 16 MSP are women.

We do OK in Wales for women but in the last London Assembly elections, the first ethnic minority on the list was placed 9th! In a city where 30% of the population is born outside the UK!

40% of our members and conference goers are women but only 25% of our PPCs and Conference Speakers. We don’t yet know how many ethnic minority members we have.

We are a white, middle class party that tends to put men in positions of influence and power. We may have a female president but she, like Margaret Thatcher is the exception that proves the rule.

We cannot, in any shape of form, even in the most diverse parts of the country claim to be a diverse party.

Why in a party, that often defines itself by it's commitment to the individual do we need diversity?

Why does it matter?

Surely, what we need are the best people for the job?

Surely it's the policies that matter not the colour of their skin or their sex?

Well, there's two reasons.

Firstly diverse groups make better decisions for everyone because even the voices of the minority or less powerful groups can be heard.

And you don’t get ‘group-think’

We all like to think that we are compassionate enough, fair enough and objective enough to take every one's situation into account but experience shows that groups of white men, largely tend to create organisations that fit the modus operandi of groups of white men.

And as Lynne Featherstone says in an article on her blog , of her time as a London Assembly Member and the difficulties ensuing were there was a homogeneity of life experiences:

"Nowhere is this clearer than in the allocation of resources, where the macho boys culture so often summons up the massive project and neglects the important details. When I was chair of transport at London Assembly it was starkly clear. Why is it that an obsession with boys-toys – the macho game of who’s got the biggest airport or the longest train – delivers multi-billion pound budgets for massive transport infrastructure projects yet not even a fraction of those budgets were spent on so called ‘soft measures’, such as making sure you can fit a double buggy through the door of a bus and making sure that local shopping centres and services are easily accessible – really easily accessible - through using public transport?"

The benefit of diversity is not because someone has different coloured skin or a differently shaped body but the different life experiences that they gain because society treats us differently depending on what colour skin we have or what sex we are.

As long as women undertake the majority of childcare and the men making the decisions do not, women will be more likely to understand the need for these 'so called soft measures' that Lynne refers to.

Often, those in privileged positions do not even comprehend of the benefits explicit and implicit that that benefits gives them; in fact because the world is designed around them they find it the hardest to see the world from a different point of view.

Secondly, there is the issue of identity.

It is, as Zohra Moosa said in the Guardian a couple of months ago, when talking about business but can be just as easily translated into politics: a culture designed for one type of person that still insists that the rest of us have to be shoe horned into working the same way.

There in politics, as in business, a whole pile of accepted practices and ‘the right’ way to do things. These practices have built up around the lives of the people who are in power. They assume that they will be married, married to someone who will take off their shoulders the burned of domesticity and childcare.

For example, why are all jobs, particularly the well paid ones, deemed to be at least 35 hours a week.?

They also define how people must dress and what they must look like. All a man has to do is put on a suit to look like an MP.

And because the groups in power look so homogenous, they also have the effect of excluding everyone else from feeling that that path is for them or even that they are wanted.

Not just from taking part, but from actually voting for us. I think women who are interested in women’s equality and those of a progressive bent feel far more at home with Labour than they do with us, because of the simple fact that Labour has made more effort to be diverse than we are.

And of course, even if you are not convinced by the need for diversity for its own sake then you should be convinced that diversity or lack of it can have an impact on electability.

Oh, and before we get on to thinking that PR is the answer to all our problems, then we should look at the experience of diversity and PR in some other countries.

If you look over at New Zealand, you will see that the National Party did not start to achieve significant electoral success until their parliamentary party list started to look more diverse.

They undertook polling and the upshot of it was that people were not voting for them because they looked like a ‘bunch of honkies’.

It was not the introduction of PR that had happened years before but the fact they were not electable that made the National party change.

They now have not just ethnic Chinese but a Samoan and a ethnic Korean MP.

It is very easy to put the onus on the group that is under represented – oh but they don’t come forward! They don’t put cards in to speak at conference! Lets give them some extra training so that they can be more like us!

But why should they engage with us when it looks quite clear that you don’t get to the top unless you’re a white male – all but one of the Chief Officers Group is male and although it’s great that Kirsty Williams leads the party in Wales, she’s just not going to have any impact on what the rest of the country thinks we look like.

People often say how politics is a dirty game; not one for those without sharp elbows but is it right that we just shrug our shoulders and leave some of the most important decisions in our lives to those with the biggest egos and the sharpest elbows.

That is not equality.

Why not change the way politics is carried out? Why not make it an inclusive place? Why not make it more equal? Why not provide the environment to create diversity?

So, how do you do that?

Well, firstly you have to make the Liberal Democrats a place where women and ethnic minorities feel welcome and want to be decision makers.

This is more that just having nice policies or the right philosophical background.

We’ve already got those and that hasn’t made us diverse.

So, we have to change ourselves and the way we do things.

We have to make contact with community groups; we have to give new members not just a delivery round but to involve them in some of the more interesting jobs. We have to write about things of interest to them in our Focuses.

We have to hold sessions on the value of being a councillor.

We have to listen to them and their thoughts about how to do things.

We have to ring up those that we know and ask them to be involved not wait for them to volunteer.

These are some of the things that we have done in Lewisham.

If you are not doing these things then why should anybody who isn’t white, middle class and largely male want anything to do with us?

And when we get women and ethnic minorities in the right positions we should not assume that there is only one way of doing things- women stepping down as PPCs outnumber men by 4 to 1. There must be something in the way those local parties are behaving that creates that pattern.

Inequality does not just happen; it requires the exercise of power and Equality does not just happen; surely millennia of human civilisation has taught us that?

And even when we are successful, we still have to deal with prejudice or unwarranted concern that this or that particular electorate are not ‘ready’ for someone different.

But however effective and active we are at the grass roots, we will not encourage diverse members and activists until the public face of the party, those in leadership positions and in parliament, more fully reflect the population they seek to represent.

So I think, we will in the end, have to do more than just encourage and head hunt. I think, in the end ,we will need to use some sort of quotas in Westminster and local elections. We already do for every sort other kind of election, both internal and external.

To be honest, I cannot believe that anyone ever wants or desires positive discrimination as a first point of call.

But if you look around the world the only national parliaments which have at least 30% of their parliament as female are those who have some sort of quotas.

I do not think that we can ignore the only things that seem to work just because we deem them to be unfair to our male, white activists.

Interestingly, I don’t know if anyone saw the article about the Equality & Human Rights Commission in today’s guardian but there was a very interesting quote from an equality lawyer, they said:

"The problem is that 'fairness', unlike equality, has no basis in law. It's a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it's about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men."

And this is our dilemma as a party – which do we value more – fairness or equality?

I know that some would find an all women shortlists in their area very unfair. Like many men found the process of zipping.

But equality and diversity is going to mean that there will be fewer opportunities for men and white men that there were before.

But it will not mean that there will be fewer opportunities for them, than for women or ethnic minorities.

We cannot have a more diverse party and keep all those people who are currently in power in power.

We have to go forward with the assumption that it will be us and the way that we do things that will have to change not BME or women as a group who have to change to fit in.

Because if we don’t sort it out ourselves and soon, it will be taken out of our hands.

Either the Speakers Conference will come out with something to force our processes or, worse (but perhaps more likely)

we will become electorally irrelevant as we put up slates that do not reflect those whose votes we want and just fail to get voted in.

But if we do change and we do become a more diverse party then we really will have the opportunity to change Britain and build a bright future for Britain.

Fairness is not the the same thing as Equality

Interesting that the EHRC (Equality & Human Rights Commission) seems to be imploding. I have to say I was, like many, underwhelmed by their recent thoughts that equality for women might have to be put on the back burner during the recession - surely that is the time that we need the EHRC most?

But I was very interested to read in the Guardian this morning, that some of the concerns are about a shift in focus aware from equaity to fairness. As an equality lawyer saying in the piece:

"The problem is that 'fairness', unlike equality, has no basis in law. It's a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it's about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men."

And so it seems to me that is the Lib Dems problem with Diversity (and despite some interesting moves forward recently, we do have a problem with it) is because we actually value fairness above equality.

For example, the only way that any parliament has ever reached the key proportion of 30% women to men has been through use of quotas; in our westminster system as currently managed that would mean All Women Shortlists.

That is of course a very unfair state of affairs for the male activists that would like to stand in a seat which is AWL (or zipped with women in front as per our Euro lists used to be) is in place.

I'm not sure that equality can be 'fair' for everyone at all times but we have to decide which is more important to us.

Just a thought....

Why would anyone join the LIberal Democrats!

Excellent film

Public Space, Pornography and what I did on my holidays

Friday afternoon at the Lib Dem’s Spring Conference and it's the Women's Policy Consultation session.

We went through a whole pile of topics, neatly titled in the consultation paper under such terms as 'Can we have it all?, Money, Sex, Love & Relationships and MEN!

One thing we got on to talking about in our group, towards the end of the session is the increasing sexualisation and objectification of young women, particularly in our public spaces.

It seems to me that the norms of pornography are seeping into our public spaces, and I don't just mean billboards in the centre of town, but the media and mainstream internet and the products we buy.

The liberal in me, reckons that pornography does not have to be degrading to women; I am largely a sex positive feminist. The liberal me, that lives in the real world, has to admit however that most of it is degrading to women

The pornographic norm is that women are ready to have sex at all times, they are happy to share their men with other women, that even when the pornography involves gang rape, the women in these scenes, though they may be unwilling to start with soon discover they really, really wanted it after all.

Above all, they must always make an effort to look attractive to men.

A 2005 review found that half of all children have logged on to a pornography website, whilst over 57% of children aged 9-19 had seen pornography online.

But they don’t have to go online; everywhere I look there are pictures and adverts involving women in sexual poses, scantily clad and often inferring some sort of lesbian relationship - but not the type that doesn't involve men, of course.

Even the Daily Mail is running articles looking at gratuitous use of sex to promote products!!

The defects that all of us have, including the models used, are airbrushed out creating a standard of perfection for young women to aspire to that actually does not exist.

Lap dancing clubs, able to operate on the same footing as cafes, have doubled across the UK in recent years. This involves naked and topless women dancing at close 'proximity' to men (often there after work or at lunch time). There is ostensibly a three feet rule but in practice this rule is not enforced.

Honest to god, I'm not a prude - I really, really don't mind what it is that people to get up to, as long as they're both consenting - but I do think that public space should not be given over to the lowest common denominator.

They even advertise lap dancing classes for women and my health club - just along from the crèche – when did the work of a sex worker become so aspirational?

I think public spaces should be available and safe places for children and young people; it's bad enough being a 37 year old woman in these times and being made to feel no good unless you're a size 10 (with at least D cup breast, of course) - who would be a 14 or 15 year old girl, trying to work out a sense of self?

Liberalism isn't just about freedom for people to be and do what they want - that's libertarianism - but is also about freedom from harm and I want to be and I want children and young people to be free from the pornographic norm that suggests that in order to be normal you have to be gagging for sex at all times (whether male or female) and that if you’re female or even just a little girl you primary aim is to look sexy and attractive to men!

As a friend of mine, over in Sydney, said recently when this subject came up at dinner - why should we let corporations and businesses (for it is they that run the lap dancing clubs, the porn sites and push the products with the highly sexual adverts) dictate to us what are public spaces feel like? Why should it always be the freedom of companies to make money through sex that wins out?

I am glad to see that today Jacqui Smith has ordered a fact-finding review into the increasing sexualisation of young women.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be like this.

I’m not long back from New Zealand plus a long weekend in Sydney. Lucky me!

But lucky New Zealanders as well. Because one of the most striking differences I noticed between the UK and NZ was that there seemed no pressure on women to be sexual objects at all times – although there did seem to be a lot of excessive baking going on.

Perhaps, they’ve yet to catch up with us, but I don’t think that’s it. New Zealand is way ahead of us in many things and especially in terms of diversity, particularly in its parliament. It’s already had two female Prime Ministers and 33.6% of it’s current MPs are female.

In fact when I spoke about how worried I was about the sexualisation of young women in the UK, they were kind of mystified - it was clearly not as much a problem there.

It is hard to say which came first.

Does New Zealand have more female MPs and therefore any over sexualisation of women and girls in public spaces has been nipped in the bud; or do more women feel able to go forward into parliament and are taken more seriously when they get there because they don’t feel any pressure to come over like a sex object?

One New Zealander that I know well, is not sure how New Zealand women became free from the need to be a sex object at all times, but thinks that it may be because women get organised in NZ. Perhaps female MPs and groups would lobby companies that wanted to produce overtly sexist and sexualised adverts and products and therefore preserve their public space for everybody, not just those who want to use sex to make money from it.

In any case, the sexualisation of young women and the pornographication of our public spaces is not inevitable; we can stop it and we can say no to handing over our public spaces to those who would be happy with the lowest common denominator.

If you would like to contribute to the Liberal Democrat's Women's Policy Consultation, you can do so here.

Diversity 101

"...many organisational cultures are outdated, having been designed for just one type of worker. The days of trying to shoe-horn people into institutions that were never designed by them or for them are over. They need to reform".

Many thanks to Zohra Moosa, in the CiF piece on Friday. She's talking about business and the world of work but she could just as equally be talking about political parties, and particularly, in my experience of the Liberal Democrats.

Jonathan Hunt of the wrote a letter in Lib Dem News, a few weeks ago, pointing out the parties dismal record of recruiting, selecting and getting elected ethnic minority candidates. We are vaguely better at getting women in to place but we are far from utilising the potential of the 40% of Liberal Democrats that are women to their full force.

And gosh, the letters that have come in since decrying Jonathan's letter! And none of them actually suggesting what we do about apart from inferring it's not really a problem!

Indeed, in the latest Lib Dem News (9th Jan), Ian Hale suggests, by some weird logic, that in Labour dominated areas, where he suggests that most BME people live:

'A capable person who wanted to be actively involved in politics might well take the pragmatic decision to join Labour'.

What he does not then go on to explain in his letter is why ethnic minority candidates should be more prone to this behaviour than white people.

Really!! The letters page of Lib Dem News can be as bad as listening to Any Answers on a Saturday afternoon at times!

It is true we do not have the luxury of safe seats that perhaps the other two parties have, which means that our techniques for getting people elected require that person to sacrifice all including career, income and family in the hope of getting elected. For a lucky (and sure, hardworking) 63 it has paid off but for many more the bet rarely has any chance of success.

I have long been of the view that we expect too much of all our candidates, whether male, female, black or white. We make the prospect and process of being a PPC such a hair shirt that those people who are in demand in their own communities, whether that's an interest community or a geographical one decide they can probably achieve their aims in another less sacrificial manner.

And so off they go, just like Chamali Fernando, and go and find something more constructive to do. Her actions were a little impatient I thought, but she's a loss to us and a gain for some other cause. We can shrug our shoulders as much as we like but, her leaving is still a net loss to us as a party.

Those of us who by virtue of our race or gender find ourselves on the wrong end of power are expected to rise above the fact that we have to work far harder than our white male peers to get nowhere near as far.

What is clear is that all these letter writers are against positive discrimination. Fair enough. But what is also clear to me is that many of these letter writers do not understand why we need to be diverse as a party. In fact, it seems to me that they see diversity as an irrelevance and are far more interest in just spewing out once more the mantra that we need the best person for the job.

But why then, is that person so often white and male? Equality does not just happen; surely millennia of human civilisation has taught us that? And, in any case, who gets to decide what is best?

But why in a party, that often defines itself by it's commitment to the individual do we need diversity? Surely it's the policies that matter not the colour of their skin or their sex?

Well, there's two reasons.

Firstly diverse groups make better decisions for the whole of society because even the voices of the minority or less powerful groups can be heard. We all like to think that we are compassionate enough and objective enough to take every one's situation into account but experience shows that groups of white men, largely tend to create organisations that fit the modus operandi of groups of white men. Take the way parliament works, for example.

And as Lynne Featherstone says in her article here of her time as a London Assembly Member and the difficulties ensuing were there was a homogeneity of life experiences:

"Nowhere is this clearer than in the allocation of resources, where the macho boys culture so often summons up the massive project and neglects the important details. When I was chair of transport at London Assembly it was starkly clear. Why is it that an obsession with boys-toys – the macho game of who’s got the biggest airport or the longest train – delivers multi-billion pound budgets for massive transport infrastructure projects yet not even a fraction of those budgets were spent on so called ‘soft measures’, such as making sure you can fit a double buggy through the door of a bus and making sure that local shopping centres and services are easily accessible – really easily accessible - through using public transport?"

The benefit of diversity is not because someone has different coloured skin or a differently shaped body but the different life experiences that they gain because society treats us differently depending on what colour skin we have or what sex we are. As long as women undertake the majority of childcare and the men making the decisions do not, women will be more likely to understand the need for these 'so called soft measures' that Lynne refers to.

Secondly, there is the issue of identity. Identity politics may be an anathema to a bunch of liberals but I can promise you that if I look at a group of people that I might aspire to be part of and I see they are all white, middle aged men then I will assume that's because the people putting them there only wanted white, middle class men. I am highly suspicious of homogeneous groups in positions of power and I don't buy that it's because they are all the best people for the job.

It is as Zohra Moosa said a culture designed for one type of person that still insists that the rest of us have to be shoe horned into working the same way.

To be honest, I cannot believe that anyone ever wants or desires positive discrimination as a first point of call. There are many other things, that we have yet to do, but that we can do before we have to resort to that. But, we have to go forward with the assumption that it will be us and the way that we do things that will have to change not BME or women as a group who have to change to fit in.

I'm hoping that the Diversity Engagement Group chaired by Vince Cable and of which I am a member will explore many of these opportunities. We are currently catching up, very slowly it seems to me, on the very basics of being able monitor and target diversity but I think once that's done we need to get much more radical and look at how the Liberal Democrats are going to change the way we do things to make being involved as easy for a woman in her thirties with 2 children to look after as it is for a similar man.

A Liberal Democrat Women's Policy? What do we need one of those for?

The Liberal Democrats Women's Policy Consultation Paper is up here.

From a quick first glance it looks pretty good and is seeking to address some of the issues that I've been writing about on this blog over the last 2 years; but I shall report back later when I've had a chance to read it properly.

Please go and have a look at it; and that includes men as well as women - any policy on women is going to affect men as well, so better you get your say now and ensure that the policy (whatever that's going to be) has a better chance of getting passed at Conference.

Oh, and if you're wondering why we, as Liberals, need a Women's Policy then click on the link above and have a read - they've anticipated the question!

Tories have a good old barny about women candidates...

I picked up this discussion on Conservative Home via CiF. I have to say that much of the debate around diversity and why women are not being picked is far more sophisticated that ours. I might also add that they are having a debate. There's always a few 'best person for the job' commenters but many of the people commenting do not view it as just a coincidence or a naturally occurring phenomenon that 85% of selections in the last few months have been of men. Most refreshingly they are actually having a proper conversation about it. We always get stuck on the discussion around positive discrimination, collectively condemn it and then go off to think about something else. And so, not much changes...

There is on the ConservativeHome comments thread serial recognition that the problem is not with women or ethnic minorities being good enough but that the role of candidate (and in their case MP) does not attract good quality women and minorities. That this debate is taking place with the arguments in place, tells me that on the path to organisational cultural change they are further on than we are. Or at least they are on Conservative Home.

For example, they talk about the roles that women are not occupying needing to change in order to attract high quality women who have choices in their life and may make decisions using different criteria on what to do with their life than their quality male peers.

I know that, of all the things I do in terms of voluntary or community work, I make the most difference in being a school governor or on the Executive and chairing working groups on my borough police consultative groups. These are groups that are keen to utilise my experience and skills developed whilst running my own rather successful business and not treat me like a ingénue just because I haven't been delivering focuses for the last 15 years. Many of my friends and family think it would be a much more logical thing for me to focus on those activities.

Still, I am the PCA Rep on the Diversity Engagement Group and I'm looking forward to see how we can make real and lasting cultural changes to the way we do things in the Lib Dems.

My logic, by the way, for sticking with the Lib Dems and continuing to campaign within the party for real diversity is that I can make a far bigger impact on society and equality by helping to sort out the problems around representation in my chosen political party. Just sticking with the current system and making sure I am head and shoulders above my male peers to try and get selected for a seat, and then keeping my head down and quiet, will not make it easier for those coming up with or behind me.

I don't want us to be doing a collective shrug of the shoulders any more when we discover that women and ethnic minorities aren't putting themselves forward for roles at every and any level of the party. I want us to work out why and change ourselves, so they do.

This evening the DEG Target Setting Working Group is having its first meeting. We need to make sure we set targets not just for candidate selections but for MPs, councillors, party chairs, federal committee members, organisers, local party committee members, conference reps and party spokespeople and members. Because we have to start measuring our success by outcomes rather than being hamstrung by a process that we are sure is fair and does not overtly discriminate but does not produce the outcomes we need. Our process may be a work of liberal democratic art but it is not working.

And before you all fall off your chairs, target setting is aspirational, it is not about setting mandatory quotas.

The Speakers Conference that was agreed last Wednesday is going to be very instructive. If you read the debate and look at it's purpose it is clear that the time when we can leave the political parties to sort their own houses out in their own way has gone already. It is being taken out of our hands and parliament itself has decided to do something about it.

Any idea the outcome of the Conference is going to be a commendation of what we are already doing and just a exhortation to try harder would be a naive one.

The wrath of Linda...

Yesterday was the big Make it Happen debate. But as The Yorkshire Guidon asks: Where were all the women?

As Jeremy pointed out in one of his blogs ahead of conference chairs are supposed to take great care to ensure a balanced debate. In fact they are trained in such issues. But yesterday, on the big debate only one women was called to speak on the platform, with only two women allowed interventions, and one of those an MP.

Well, I hear you cry! If women will continue not to put in cards for debates then what can they expect? The Chair told us at the beginning that in the interests of balance in the 'argument' other balance would have to be forfeited. I immediately realised that would mean that it was probably going to be an all male debate.

But why would balance have to be sacrificed? I could not believe in 100 cards there would only be one woman or that all the women who put in cards would be arguing on one side of the debate. That would be just weird, wouldn't it?

Well, this afternoon after lunchtime fringe I bumped into Meral Ece and Linda Jack chatting at the bottom of the escalator in the Conference centre. And Linda, the star, had proof of the imbalance in the cards being called in the Make it Happen Debate. It would seem that yes, there were far more men that put in cards but of those men around 30% got to speak and of the women who put in cards only 11% got to speak.

This makes me very cross; very cross.

But I'm not the only one.

By luck, Linda had put in an advance question on the Federal Executive Report on the lack of information around Ethnic Minority diversity. On her follow up question she let rip! She was fantastic and thankfully Simon Hughes was in complete agreement with her. Duncan Brack, Chair of the Federal Conference Committee has been asked to provide an explanation a report at the next Federal Executive.

Good; because we cannot go on like this as a party. We cannot keep making excuses about our lack of diversity.

Arguments best left for down the pub not conference…

I was very frustrated not to get called in the Conference debate on Transport today; my speech, which I've published below, was a good few hours of effort, not to mention the effort putting into looking presentable for the conference goers. I even put my contact lenses in!

I was arguing in favour of the WLD amendment to take into account the experiences of women and vulnerable people when creating transport policy. Two people spoke against the amendment but only the mover and summator got to speak for.

It was pretty frustrating, as the vote was close enough for the show of hands to be made twice, so it missed getting passed . I am disappointed not to have been called but otherwise the debate was reasonably well balanced.

I suspect that I was just one too many female Londoners who wanted to speak and I was neither elected to the London Assembly, nor was it my first time, like some others. Still, given the closeness of the vote I can't help feeling that just one argument from the floor in favour of the amendment might have been enough to get it passed.

This was the amendment:

d) Improving the safety of local transport for women and vulnerable individuals by requiring all

Local Transport Authorities and local councils with responsibility for transport services to:

i) Undertake an audit of public spaces and transport networks with a view to designing

and modifying them with the safety of women and vulnerable individuals specifically in

mind.

ii) Ensure the availability of emergency telephones at transport stations and stops.

iii) Review the position and design of bus stops to ensure they are visible and well lit.

iv) Pilot schemes which allow women and vulnerable individuals off the bus between stops

at night.

And this was my speech in support of the motion:

The motion says that the Liberal Democrats are the champions of the passenger.

It also says that freedom should be one of the guiding principles of our transport policy.

That we should try to minimise danger to public safety.

I agree with all of that.

But this motion does not explain how we would make people safer.

And it does not recognise how men and women have different experiences of using transport services.

The champions of the passenger?

The Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds has found that women and men travel by different means, at different times, to different patterns of locations over different distances, with different people, for different purposes and journeys take on different meanings.

Women are slightly more likely than men to travel by public transport, especially to work, and they use buses more than men.

It also found that these differences in travel are not addressed systematically by current transport policy and provision.

I fear this motion as drafted falls into the same trap.

Professor Julian Hine has found that women are one of the most transport disadvantaged groups in the UK.

That 's especially women with children, Lone parents, older women, who use buses more, and women in public sector housing.

Younger and older women experience exclusion as a result of poor public transport .

And what about freedom?

Women perceive they are at risk of personal danger.

That fear can curtail our freedom.

Women are more likely than men to have worries about their own safety on buses, trains and trams.

The Fawcett Society has found that around four in ten women have some fears when using public transport.

Personal safety is a key concern amongst the types of women I talked about before.

They fear walking in the dark.

They avoid making trips.

They fear using bus and train stations at off-peak periods.

Other people have fears on behalf of women too.

I wonder how many times women in this hall have been told that it is 'common sense' or 'for their own good 'not to go out late at night or take a particular way home?

I know that's happened to me. And more than once.

A few months ago, Labour's home secretary Jacqui Smith said that that walking on streets at night wasn't "a thing that people do"

As liberals we cannot stand for any of that.

Why should we curtail our freedoms to accommodate those who indulge in criminal or anti social behaviour?

Why should we be invisible in society, just because transport links and infrastructure have not been planned with people in mind?

I support the measures set out in Amendment Two

An audit of public spaces and transport networks or reviewing the position and design of bus stops are key to making sure that our transport policies champion all passengers and protect all citizens from personal danger.

But the most irritating aspect was the argument from a young woman from the Wirral (or at least I think it was the Wirral), whose name I can't remember (which is very rude of me but I was more interested in what she was saying). She spoke well and with passion but she was completely wrong headed in everything she said – the Lib Dems are clearly a very 'broad church' if both she and I are in the same organisation. When the conference website publishes that she spoke I will tell you her name but they haven't yet.

She used to devastating effect the two frames that the amendment was bureaucratic and discriminatory.

She first of all made the argument that undertaking audits of public spaces and transport interchanges to see if there were improvements that could be made would be overly bureaucratic and expensive. She's wrong in fact but also wrong in principle. Because something is hard is not a reason to do it…providing for minority, under represented and vulnerable groups is often hard. If it were easy, it would probably already been done but it is not a good enough reason to not to bother.

Then she went on to make what she called an ideological argument, which is fine if you base your ideology on the sort of conversation that is more suitable to be had in the pub than a conference debating hall.

Her argument was that because she had never been mugged but that a couple of male friends of hers were mugged in Hackney (when she had lived there) that what the amendment was doing was unfairly stereotyping women. Because it is young men that actually are the most likely to be victims of crime (which is true) then we don't need to do anything about making women feel safer. That, because she herself felt fine, the 4 out of 10 women who do feel unsafe should be ignored. They are not a stereotype, they are a fact.

I like my policy and my arguments to be based on evidence and not just on the basis of my own experience.

Many, many of the things that I write about and campaign for are not dear to my heart because of my own personal experience. Some are, but I would say most are not. I too have never been attacked in a public place, I have never been raped, I run my own business and am probably in the top 1-2% of earners in the UK. But that doesn't mean I rubbish the experiences or feelings of others, or ignore the work of academics and researchers who actually gather evidence of what is happening.

Which is why when I hear, that social inequality is rising I vote to give tax back to those on the lowest incomes, or that only 5% of reported rapes end in am conviction I campaign for something to be done. And, when I know that four out of 10 women have some fears when using public transport, even if that is not my own experience, I use that evidence as the basis of how to make up my mind what to do.

Norman Baker was happy for the amendment to be included but the conference hall was just swayed by an effective but intellectually vapid speech from the Wirral. My suspicions are that it will make it into the manifesto anyway.

Still: this, together with the lack of female speakers in the Make it Happen debate yesterday, tells me that we still have a long way to go as a party when it comes to gender issues.