Getting Away With It

Earlier this week, I read a remark on Twitter about how long it seems to be taking for the post-election Tory-DUP voting arrangement to be agreed. The poster mused that if we were in the same situation with a proposed deal between Labour and the SNP dragging on and on – leaving the country effectively without a stable government in the meantime – the press would be all over it! I think he's right, and I think the Tories are being given far more leeway on this matter than Labour would be afforded in similar circumstances.

But the implied conclusion – that our media (and our society) harbours an inherent bias towards the Conservatives – doesn't really hold water, for me. What we are seeing here is not an intentional skewing of the playing field, or weighting of the dice, but simply the potency of our own preconceptions.

Reputations are powerful things. The general perception of the Tories is that they are competent and efficient governors, and utterly heartless bastards. You have only to look at the reactions to the Conservative Party manifesto last month to see how this impacts on reporting; by and large, they get away with including no costing details for their policies at all, because it is assumed that they're Tories so they know what they're doing with money – whilst they get hammered in the press for even the slightest hint of heartlessness and bastardness, like the so-called 'dementia tax' (the intentions of which were actually rather more noble than you think – to reduce intergenerational inequality).

On the other side of the coin, Labour have so much farther to go to prove themselves fiscally responsible, thanks to an ingrained reputation for profligacy (which, it can be argued, has not always been entirely deserved). And yet, Labour politicians can get away with some things their Conservative counterparts could never hope to…

I am constantly baffled, for example, how the odious Labour MP John McDonnell has managed to remain in the senior job of Shadow Chancellor for as long as he has. McDonnell is a thug and a bully who not only makes excuses for violence and rioting, but actively praises and encourages it. He is to the left what Tommy Robinson is to the right – and I know beyond doubt that he would not be able to stay in such a high-ranking position within the party if he were Conservative, rather than a Labour MP.

But McDonnell is Labour. They're the nice ones, right? Not great with money, maybe – but they mean well, and at least they care about people… So his inflammatory rhetoric and his incitements to violence – his descriptions of recent riots in London as 'the best of our movement' – are given a pass, when they surely would not be if they came from a right-winger.

McDonnell's recent calls for a 'Day Of Rage' and for 'a million people on the streets' to force out the government are dog whistles to violence and insurrection; the term 'Day Of Rage' is even borrowed from his boss Jeremy Corbyn's 'friends' in Hamas.

Controversial right-wing broadcaster Katie Hopkins (deservedly) lost her job at LBC radio after tweeting about jihadist terrorism using the phrase 'final solution' – an expression synonymous with the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But Labour's Shadow Chancellor can employ the vernacular of an organisation designated on the EU's terrorism blacklist – whose constitution, until earlier this year, explicitly called for jihad and the killing of jews – and not even be asked to apologise.

McDonnell's 'joke' about Esther McVey – 'Why aren't we lynching the bitch?' – during a former election campaign, for which he refused to apologise, was condemned by prominent members of his own party as 'atrocious' 'misogynistic' 'vitriol'. This alone would've been enough to see a Tory MP forced to resign his position; the Shadow Chancellor escapes with barely a scratch, yet again.

By any reasonable assessment, John McDonnell is a truly nasty piece of work. The fact that he is still allowed to retain a high-profile shadow cabinet job – even after all his incitements to rioting and 'lynching', and using the language of terrorists – is testament to the strength of people's perceptions of Labour politicians – even when they get things wrong – as fundamentally good, well-intentioned, kind-hearted people. And that's how he gets away with it.

Equality of outrage

Following the promotion of several female MPs to the Cabinet in last week's reshuffle, criticism was heaped upon the Daily Mail* for it's coverage of the new ministers - which focussed on their clothes and general appearance, rather than their qualifications for the job and their qualities as serious politicians.

Labour MP for Bishop Auckland Helen Goodman, however, chose to Tweet this:

It does female ministers a great disservice to think they are only there to 'make up the numbers'; when a male politician is promoted, no one asks whether he has been put in that position because the Prime Minister thinks he'll be good at it, or just to keep up appearances - why should we cast these aspersions on female MPs?

When Sajid Javid was made Minister for Culture, attacks in the press focused mainly on the fact he was a former banker, rather than claiming he was only there to increase muslim representation in the cabinet instead of on his own merits - even though a look at the cultural background of someone who is in charge of culture might actually be relevant to how he might undertake the job.  It is distasteful that female politicians are still seen merely as 'window dressing'.

For those interested in more than just a female MP's clothing and appearance, this excellent Buzzfeed article goes into more detail about some of the newly promoted ministers' CVs, backgrounds, what inspires them, etc. - and aptly demonstrates that they have been put in the cabinet on merit, not purely to fulfil some quota.

A few hours later, Helen Goodman deleted her Tweet, and wrote that it had been 'intended as a lighthearted remark'.

I'm very sorry my last tweet offended some people. I intended it as a light-hearted remark.
— Helen Goodman (@HelenGoodmanMP) July 17, 2014

Now, I don't really think that Helen Goodman is sexist.  If she genuinely thinks that the 'most interesting' thing about Esther McVey, Nicky Morgan, Penny Mordaunt, et al is their clothes, then that's her opinion - but I highly doubt she is in any way an enemy of women in politics.  What's remarkable is the muted response her comments received; with the exception of a few Conservative activists seeking to make hay over an opponent's blunder, I have seen very little said about this incident at all.

Imagine, if you will, what the reaction would've been to a male MP (of any party) Tweeting the same incendiary and derogatory remarks about female ministers - and then trying to pass it off as "aww, c'mon guys - it was just a joke!"  He would've been hauled over the coals.  Whether that would be the correct reaction to his comments is another matter - but he would certainly have been castigated for saying what Helen Goodman said.  Ms Goodman, on the other hand, seems to have got off fairly lightly.

The real sexism here is that people seem to be considerably less offended by Ms Goodman's Tweet than they would have been had it been posted by a male politician.  If particular comments are deemed sexist - and, therefore, unacceptable - it shouldn't matter who says them.  The equality movement are fighting the good fight for causes such as equal pay - but we won't truly achieve those goals until we have equal outrage too.

* When is criticism NOT heaped upon the Daily Mail?!