Why We Get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman

Author:Isabel Hardman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Great Britain, Political Parties, Political Process, Political Science, Politics & Government, Sociology
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2018-05-15T03:00:00+00:00

Power and control

Some politicians had also long avoided taking responsibility for behaviour far more serious than the personal mess of a consensual affair. But then the global sexual harassment scandal broke in late 2017. Allegations such as those about Hollywood producers like Harvey Weinstein quickly spread to every industry, and Parliament was certainly not immune. Scores of MPs were alleged to have acted inappropriately towards both women and men, including considerably younger researchers. Michael Fallon resigned as Defence Secretary after journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer revealed that he had touched her leg during a work lunch many years previously. Her revelation, which he apologised for, prompted other women to come forward with their own stories, including another journalist, Jane Merrick, who told Downing Street that Fallon had kissed her when she was a junior political journalist. Writer Kate Maltby alleged that Damian Green, then First Secretary of State, had touched her leg during a meeting about her aspirations to break into politics, before sending her suggestive texts about a newspaper feature in which she had worn a corset. At this point, someone thought fit to leak to the papers that police had found ‘extreme’ pornography on Green’s computer when they raided his parliamentary office in 2009. Green eventually had to resign after it was found that he had lied about the existence of this pornography.

The scandal quickly turned ugly. Tory researchers circulated a list of falsehoods, inaccuracies and aspersions about MPs that had made it into the public domain. Some of the inclusions in this ‘dirty dossier’ named the wrong MP. Others put people’s private consensual relationships alongside claims of sexual assault, as though all sex in Westminster was now wrong. It muddied the waters, conveniently for those who wanted to dismiss the whole situation as being a storm in a teacup.

But it wasn’t a storm in a teacup, not as far as the women who had been seriously assaulted and harassed were concerned. One activist, Bex Bailey, bravely waived her right to anonymity and informed the BBC that she had been raped at a Labour Party event but told not to complain as it might harm her political career. Other complaints had as much to do with prolonged indifference from the political parties as they did with what had actually happened.

What stung victims the most was that the parties had known about the incidents for years. Some of the complaints stretched back longer than a decade. And not only was it well known in Westminster that there were sex pests in the corridors of power; it was also acknowledged that there was a culture in which women, particularly younger women, were treated as lesser beings, sex objects who deserved comments ranging from the smutty to the obscene. Women also swapped tales on who to avoid and who wasn’t ‘safe in taxis’. One set of allegations against Labour’s Ivan Lewis included staff in the department where he had worked warning young female staff to stay away from him because of his reputation.5 He denied all the claims against him, but apologised for making women feel uncomfortable.

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