And another thing…

FASCINATING to watch the Conservative Party convulse over the prospect of all-women shortlists. Been there, seen it, done, it, bought the tee-shirt…

I admit that as a young man with parliamentary ambitions in the early 1990s, I was not a strong vocal supporter of all-women shortlists in the Labour Party. Even today, I’m resigned to their inevitability rather than enthusiastic about them.

Faced with the prospect of losing my chance even to put myself forward as a Labour candidate on account of the fact that I was born male, various male comrades and I started to discuss what could be done – within party rules, of course – to frustrate the party’s aim of imposing all-women shortlists.

The key, we concluded, was mandatory reselection. Once in each parliament, every Labour MP hoping to continue in parliament must be reselected to fight the subsequent election. It was suggested that, in a seat where the (usually male) MP was intending to retire, and where there might be a prospect of the national party imposing an all-women shortlist, then a “mock deselection” could be organised. Instead of announcing publicly that he intended to retire, the incumbent would instead announce he was planning to stand again. An aspiring young (male) candidate would then mount a challenge to the MP’s continuing candidacy, a challenge to which the incumbent would mysteriously succumb. No retirement, so no vacancy, so no imposition of all-women shortlist.

Genius, eh?

Undoubtedly, there will be those in the Conservative Party who will consider pursuing such cynical strategies. But they’re wasting their time. What did for all-women shortlists in the 1990s was the fact that employment law made them illegal. That’s no longer the case.

I still don’t support all-women shortlists. On the other hand, I can’t see any alternative to increasing the numbers of women in the Commons. And there’s no doubt that, in Labour’s experience, whenever an all-women shortlist is announced, a much wider range of female candidates are encouraged to apply, secure in the knowledge that it won’t be a carve-up to the advantage of a favoured son.

I’ll be interested to see how this debate pans out in the Conservative Party.

MY TORY chum, Iain Dale, is optimistically punting Louise “Sarah Palin is my political heroine” Bagshawe’s recent Tweets as articulating Tory European policy “better than either David Cameron or Eric Pickles did this morning”:

Here’s our policy on Lisbon: we oppose it, and we want a referendum. And if it’s not ratified by polling day, we’ll have one. And if it is?

If it is, we’ll announce what we do about its lack of legitimacy then. The Tories: crossing bridges when we come to them.

Labour hates it when David Cameron is pragmatic. It’s sweet how desperate for a Euro-split they are. This sceptic is fine w/ being practical.

There’s only one tiny problem with this attempt to paper over the cracks in the Tory Party before it all comes crashing down like a Glasgow MP’s bedroom ceiling: if the treaty is ratified before the general election, then, by definition, Cameron will have time before polling day to tell us what he will do. There would be no justification for waiting until after polling day finally to announce what he actually meant by “we would not let matters rest there.”

The nation holds its breath.

THIS casual reference to Hitler and Labour in the same sentence is pretty pathetic. I’ll have more to say soon about this recent and nauseating trend for politicians of all parties to smear their opposition, but in the meantime, just consider what Bagshawe is saying:

Labour gave Formula 1 an exemption from the cigarette advertising ban. Eccleston said something stupid and vaguely positive about Hitler. Ergo… You see where she’s going with that?

This might be the kind of tactic Bagshawe’s political heroine thinks is fine, but it’s not. It stinks.