One of the main themes of David Cameron’s leadership campaign was to change the Conservative party in order to change the country.
One of the first things he did as leader was boost mentoring for women who could go on to become Tory candidates.
Then he set up the A-list (acknowledging that all-women shortlists were controlling, and a bit patronising, and not the immediate answer if we hadn’t tried other methods).
The party leadership has been clear on this from the beginning – they want to see more women and more BME candidates selected. They encouraged, they exhorted, but they reserved the right to legislate. This is, by the way, a lesson for all of us in how they might govern.
And yet the last seven selections have picked men.
I have nothing against any of the people selected – I’m sure that the associations concerned have picked the person they believe to be the right candidate for them.
But there is a problem of under-representation in Parliament. There’s a problem of under-representation of women, of non-white people, of non-Christians, of disabled people, of people from non-professional backgrounds, of gay people, of all sorts of people. So we’ve ended up with a chamber full of very similar sorts of people, and it’s a self-replicating cycle – ‘He looks like an MP’ so we’ll select him.
I have never been a fan of identity politics – I’d rather a Parliament full of people who care about their communities and the future of our country, no matter what boxes they tick. But it’s undeniable that a room full of middle-aged white men complaining about their expenses is horrendously off-putting, and Parliament is having a serious problem connecting with normal voters.
I would like to see strenuous efforts made to go out and identify people with the potential to become MPs – some effort is made, but political parties do like to talk within themselves rather than going out and connecting with people outside election time.
I would like to see some way of giving financial help to people who otherwise couldn’t afford to stand for election. I don’t know how you would do that – but surely there is a way.
I would like to see a better way for people who don’t want to be MPs to be involved in politics – at the moment, you’re either ‘just’ a voter, or ‘just’ aiming to be an MP. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said to me ‘So where are you applying’ and they are all taken aback when I say I don’t want to be an MP.
The fact of the matter is that there is a whole host of problems in making Parliament representative of the country. Encouraging the selection (and election) of more women is just the start.
I am a woman. I wouldn’t want to be elected on an all-woman shortlist (just as well I don’t want to be elected at all). But honestly – what other suggestions do you have?
No related posts.
I would recommend studying the qualities that made, say, Margaret Thatcher, Anne Widdecombe and even Barbara Castle successes, and leave those gays and non-Christians who are intent on deconstructing this Christian country to their ivory towers in the media.
Frugal Dougal: ‘intent on deconstructing this Christian country’? What?!
Part of what I think makes Britain a great place to live is its variety. What you seem to be saying is that great swathes of Britons don’t deserve any voice in how our country is run. Is that really how you think our democracy should work?
The last few selections have all been carried out by open primaries, the system that the party favoured, but which doesn’t seem to have brought about the results they wanted.
Perhaps we should dissolve the people, and elect another.
What we should be doing is to instigate a programme aimed at improving the quality of all candidates irrespective of sex, colour or anything else.
As Teresa May said on the radio sometime ago a starting point is to look at the skills set – and I would add competencies to that. You will then have a template on which to base the development of good quality candidates. And, heaven knows, even a cursory watching of the Parliament channel shows just how essential that is. Some of the present bunch simply are not at the level that would earn them a salary of £65k a year in the real world. In fact, in a phrase used in my locality, I wouldn’t pay them in brass washers.
If you would like to discuss this Fiona please feel free to contact me, which you can do via my website.
I don’t think there is a problem of underrepresentation at all, if all you mean is not satisfying an artificial definition of diversity by tick-box quota filling. There is a huge problem of real people with real outside experience and independent minds not getting elected to Parliament. Such people rightly do not want to end up as lobby fodder being ordered around by the whips and CCHQ. This decision is all about Cameron purging dissenting voices, using the left’s notion of “fairness” (aka discrimination) as the pretext. It speaks volumes about what he really is: a wealthy left-leaning patrician with a strong authoritarian streak.
Fiona – we need more women as Tory MPs but the problem is that the Party didn’t do the hard work of identifying, headhunting, mentoring, training and guiding women candidates when it could have made the difference.
Instead it has – in characteristic politician style – gone for the big gesture and the quick fix.
The truth is that the women who have been put before the recent selections have not performed well enough to win. Some of them were underprepared, some may have had off-days and, frankly, some of them are not of sufficient quality.
At this late stage, the introduction of all-women shortlists is a clunky, Harman-esque mechanism that sells out our meritocratic principles without significantly changing the composition of the Conservative benches.
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Sean Fear: The only open primary was in Totnes. The rest are a kind of self-selecting caucus thing.
Dorothy Wilson: Absolutely agree; that’s how the party found some of the excellent people on the List. But we need to do more to encourage more non-traditional politicians to join in. And I agree that there probably are some people on the List, the PPC roster and indeed in the HoC who maybe aren’t right.
Common Sense: Yes we should have done more to encourage more people to stand. But the problem at the moment is not that women on the List aren’t good enough; it’s the ongoing problem of self-reflecting, self-replicating, ‘why aren’t you married with 2.4 children and a nice wife to bake cakes for the constituency coffee morning?’.
Fundamentally the party is faced with two options: Look hard at ourselves, and make sure that we’re not dismissing good people out of hand, and increase the number of women selected over the next three months. Or face the possibility of some all-women shortlists after January.
Michael McGowan (sorry I missed you in previous comment!): You’re right, there is a problem of real people. Part of fixing that (and it’s a LONG process, hopefully helped by some of the three points I raise in my post, and by other initiatives such as free votes etc that we have championed here) is to identify good people who have much to contribute, and part of that is to increase the number of women in parliament.
There have been 291 women and 4559 men elected to Parliament since women got the vote. I don’t think that’s good enough. I don’t think it makes for rounded laws.
Dave’s post this morning continues the argument – and I think actually the area he’s talking about is an even longer-term problem with a more complex solution.
There is an over representation of gay people according to Mathew Parris.