The result of Labour's all-women shortlist here in North West Durham will be announced today. It may already have been. In any case, I will know that result tomorrow morning. Only one candidate on it was at all credible, and in fact she was very good indeed.
There is no getting away from the fact that her husband, then as now, was a policeman in this area during the miners' strike. But there really is no need to dredge up all of that, because there is a much bigger issue at stake. Thanks to Harriet Harman's Equalities Bill, which neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems would repeal, any seat with a woman MP will never again be permitted a male parliamentary candidate, of any party or none.
This year, pending the re-emergence of the proper parties that will right this wrong, we know what we have to do.
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Disagree. All of the candidates were VERY credible and did well for themselves.
ReplyDeleteWell, the votes are in now.
ReplyDeleteThere is no getting away from the fact that her husband, then as now, was a policeman in this area during the miners' strike. But there really is no need to dredge up all of that
ReplyDeletePerish the thought. I am beginning to see what people mean when they say that you are a much nastier politician than you appear. How about coming to some financial arrangement with the people who worshipped the ground your father walked on while he was vicar of a pit village during the strike? I mean a family who unlike any candidate's husband were definitely not in the police and still aren't.
He doesn't need to do anything in that ward, Anonymous. He just has to turn up with his mother's face and say anything he likes in his father's voice. The name recognition would have seen him top of the poll there anyway. An appearance by the heir in person would give him well over half the vote.
ReplyDeleteThey are taking down your comments on Harry's Place but leaving up the replies to them, it is very strange to read.
ReplyDeleteB, it was 20 years ago, stretching back to nearly 30. But there is a large settled population, and the older section of that are of course the people most likely to vote. Whenever I go there or meet people from there, even if I am talking to people I don't know, they always speak fondly of my father and ask after my mother.
ReplyDeleteStill, we can't win an election simply by topping the poll, or even taking over half the vote, in what was only a single-member ward in the District Council days. But I'd love to do both. That would be so sweet.
Anonymous 20:27, I know, isn't it a hoot? This time next week, these student harassers of the Reverend Stephen Sizer could be sharing a cell with their idol, arrested on his way out of the Chilcot Inquiry, and on the strength of his confessions both thereto and to Fern Britton. But on-topic, please.
"any seat with a woman MP will never again be permitted a male parliamentary candidate, of any party or none."
ReplyDeleteI am very alarmed by this! Do you have a source, I believe you, but I need to see it with my own eyes.
The BBC has the story of the quota proposed by the Speaker's Conference, although it didn't feel this big enough to broadcast:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8451096.stm
Harman's Government (i.e., three-line-whipped) amendment to the Equalities Bill is on its way. It will be as I set out, an extension of the parties' internal AWS arrangements, which are not restricted to such seats but which do include them.
Will the BBC bother to broadcast that?
Both main parties already do this Kyle, so they'll think nothing of making it the law. Their media allies won't even notice either. But they have far more of them than this. Is there a Labour MP in the North East retiring and NOT being replaced by an AWS? Funny how there was no AWS when Tony Blair wanted his right hand man to succeed him. Or in Liverpool West Derby when Stephen Twigg felt like being an MP again so the sitting one was peremptorily kicked out to make way for him.
ReplyDeleteFunny that you should mention Bob Wareing, of whom another time.
ReplyDelete"Is there a Labour MP in the North East retiring and NOT being replaced by an AWS?"
ReplyDeleteWansbeck.
Somehow, "just the one" sounds even worse than "none at all".
ReplyDeleteAll genders: Darlington, Easington, Stockton North, Wansbeck (4)
ReplyDeleteJust Women: Durham NW, Newcastle Central, Newcastle North, Sunderland Central, Houghton & Sunderland South, Washington & Sunderland West, Tyneside North (7)
"All genders"? The way I learned it, there were "two sexes". But that was pre-Harman, of course.
ReplyDeleteTyneside North is all-women.
ReplyDelete