After a week in which the culture of Westminster – or should we say Pestminster – politics hit a new nadir, I was cheered up by the voice of a young female politician in the making. This Thursday’s council elections will see Welsh 16 and 17-year-olds allowed to vote for the first time.
On Radio Wales, expressing her enthusiasm for this democratic debut, was Stella Orrin - the Welsh Youth Parliament’s representative for Aberavon.
She spoke eloquently about what it meant to her generation: “Ever since I was a young girl politics has been something I’ve been very interested in and I’ve always been looking forward to the time I will be able to vote,” she said, adding: “So I’m really grateful for this opportunity and it’s something we should all be taking full advantage of as young people.”
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Stella went on to explain how she and her classmates had been discussing the local elections. Some were confused by or even fearful of politics, she said, but she endeavoured to convince them of the importance of voting and taking an interest.
In a couple of sentences, the teenager brought a maturity and dignity to the topic that made my heart both sing and sink. Sing because she gave me hope for the future. The engagement of society’s youngest members in the democratic process is crucial, not least because so many of the decisions made now will hit them harder than any other generation.
Sink because her words had come so soon after news bulletins that reflected how toxic an environment politics can be for women. The contrast was cruel. Here was a young female invested in a world that has let her gender down in devastating fashion this week.
Misogyny and sexual harassment span a spectrum at Westminster that runs from Carry On Commons buffoonery to something altogether more sinister. The Angela Rayner Basic Instinct debacle splashed across the Mail on Sunday was both sexist and classist.
An unnamed Tory MP was quoted as saying: “She knows she can’t compete with Boris’s Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks.”
These “other skills” were claimed to be a Sharon Stone/Catherine Tramell impression in which Rayner “likes to put Mr Johnson off his stride in the chamber by crossing and uncrossing her legs when they clash at Prime Minister’s Questions”. The Mail on Sunday described these twisted accusations as “mischievous claims”.
Alleging that the deputy leader of the opposition seeks to gain political advantage by flashing her crotch goes way beyond “mischief”. This isn’t that catch-all excuse for so many unacceptable comments about women – “banter” - it’s a vile and misogynist slur.
The Tories don’t have the monopoly on reducing female politicians to sex objects, however. BBC Wales has reported that a Welsh MP has spoken out on lewd comments allegedly made to her by a member of the shadow cabinet. She said she was described as a “secret weapon” because “women want to be her friend” and men want to sleep with her.
The MP, who wishes to remain anonymous, said this incidence of sexism was not a one-off. The Conservative MP accused of watching porn in the House of Commons chamber may have also wished to remain anonymous but his identity was revealed yesterday.
Neil Parish, the 65-year-old member for Tiverton and Honiton, has been suspended from the parliamentary party and is under investigation by the Commons Standards Committee. At a meeting of woman MPs this week, two female colleagues made complaints after allegedly seeing him view porn on his phone both in the chamber and during a hearing of a select committee.
The thought that this could have happened in the House of Commons is absolutely sick-making. It’s a scenario that beggars belief. Or is it?
Given that there are reportedly 56 MPs who have been accused of sexual misconduct – including three cabinet ministers – perhaps these latest claims are not so surprising. The Westminster Bubble doesn’t seem to have been punctured by the #MeToo movement like the rest of the world.
Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme was set up to deal with allegations of bullying and harassment after the Pestminster scandals of 2017 but the speed of progress remains glacial. Journalist Cathy Newman investigated those controversies, finding then that “sexual harassment and the abuse of power is really part of the fabric”.
But, writing in yesterday’s Independent, she notes little has changed: “To date just one MP has been referred to the standards committee for a breach – and was punished accordingly…it’s not a track record that inspires confidence.” Transfer those statistics to the workplace most of the electorate are familiar with and the Westminster Bubble appears more impenetrable than ever.
Imagine working in a company of 650 staff in which 52 employees had been accused of sexual misconduct. They’d all be suspended pending further investigation in the real world.
But the attitudes enshrined in the Angela Rayner Basic Instinct slur were formed in a smaller world that has disproportionate influence in the corridors of British power. I saw this world and the privately-educated men who inhabited it at university.
From the age of seven, they embarked on an entitled path, exchanging one set of ivy-clad quadrangles for another until they reached the public school writ large that is the House of Commons. So many of them back then couldn’t relate to women in a mature and equable way – the crude rating system they applied to female undergraduates still makes me shudder.
And all these years later this male section of the political class still struggles with respecting women in public life – particularly a woman like Angela Rayner whose resilient working class background of achievement against the odds couldn’t be further removed from their own privileged experience.
International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said yesterday that all women in parliament have been subjected to “inappropriate language and wandering hands” and revealed she had once been “pinned up against a wall” by a male MP.
“The vast majority of the men I work with are delightful, they are committed parliamentarians, they are passionate about the causes they fight,” she said. “But there are a few for whom too much drink or indeed a sort of view that somehow being elected makes God’s gift to women, that they can suddenly please themselves. That is never OK, that kind of disrespect for women.
She added: “Fundamentally, if you’re a bloke, keep your hands in your pockets and behave as you would if you had your daughter in the room.”
And would those daughters ever contemplate a career in politics? It’s not just about the culture within the walls of Westminster, social media is saturated with sexist abuse of female politicians.
Just this week Senedd Member Julie Morgan was portrayed as a witch in a Twitter cartoon. I can’t think of a less suitable candidate for such a cruel image as Julie, a woman of gentle integrity. This kind of misogyny makes an impact on politics from the grassroots up.
Deryn Consulting have released statistics this week on the number of female candidates standing in the council elections in Wales which show how far we still have to go. Changing representation in politics changes the culture of politics. We owe this change to teenage girls like Stella Orrin. As she and her female peers embark on their journey of participating in democracy they deserve a political culture that is inclusive, respectful and equal.
