Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith has pledged that fifty per cent of all Labour MPs and Shadow Cabinet ministers will be women.
At present, this seems an irrational and illogical commitment. There is no good reason for any woman to have anything to do with the Labour Party at present. It is not safe for them to be in the party. Owen Smith wants to recruit more victims for the hard left in his party to persecute.
Smith wants half the Parliamentary party irrespective of talent and ability to be women. They will be women first and competent second. The Conservatives, by contrast, prefer ability. Even without compulsory lists, the party has its second women prime minister. Could anyone imagine man-hating Harriet Harman or simpering Yvette Cooper being even a tenth as able in office as Mrs May?
Mrs May did not attain her position because it was a woman’s turn in the job or to satisfy a quota. For half a decade facing her across the Commons, Yvette Cooper did not land a single punch on Mrs May, despite the office of home secretary arguably being the toughest job on the front bench. Harriet Harman’s political CV is not impressive, doing jobs of even less significance than Ed Miliband’s stint as climate change secretary, a job that was so important to the nation that it has now been abolished. Owen Smith’s idea will promote mediocrities when the country needs talent at the top.
This is also the worst possible time to be a female activist in the Labour Party. Put brutally, women are currently not safe in the Labour Party. I have written before about the dangers of socialism to women, pointing out the penchant of the hard left for rape and sexual abuse. Given that elements of the hard left have infiltrated Labour, this did not bode well. Forty-five quota-appointed women Labour MPs have written to Jeremy Corbyn complaining about their treatment at the hands of Corbyn’s supporters. It is noted that no female supporters of Corbyn have received the same kind of treatment. The abuse and rape threats have all gone one way. Corbyn has mumbled some words on the topic. The abuse has not gone away.
Corbyn may profess innocence of instigating or supporting these acts of intimidation, and he personally may well be so. However, given the failure of the party to properly deal with racism aimed at semitic ethnicities and certain faiths, perhaps the various sexist threats are just par for the course for Corbyn’s supporters, even without his explicit approval.
Labour’s embattled leader did not improve the welfare of women in the Labour Party by opposing a secret ballot at last week’s NEC meeting, even though a clearly fearful woman pleaded for this to take place to protect her from further abuse and threats. Corbyn’s supporters are simply attacking any kind of weakness in their opponents, including a woman’s fear of assault and rape, a kind of fear that men do not consider. This is because violence is seen by the extremists as a legitimate form of political expression. Indeed, the Unite union recently ditched a clause restricting them to lawful activity.
Is tribal loyalty and a promise of preferential treatment enough for women to remain in the Labour Party if their safety is at risk if they say or do the ‘wrong’ thing? If Owen Smith gets his way, what is to stop a militant group from intimidating a Labour woman MP into submission and compliance with their odious views when a man in the same position would tell the leftist cowards to take a hike? Men and women react differently to threats to their bodies and no amount of calm and politically correct lecturing by misguided virtue-signallers can change this fact.
The battle for the soul of the Labour Party has effectively become solely a man’s job and this is entirely due to the behaviour of the hard left infiltrators. It is ironic that the self-styled ‘party of equality’ actually has the most sexist members in its ranks. It is disturbing that the party that describes itself as opposed to racism turns a blind eye to racism when it concerns certain races or faiths characterised by a close relationship to the United States of America. It is disgusting that the party’s leader opposes military action against groups that rape, enslave and murder the kind of people that Labour boasts that it protects and supports. Labour is now the party of violence.
The Labour Party is currently no place for a woman unless she is of the hard left and desires a socialist one-party republic and economic dictatorship in the UK. Any woman who does not sign up to these ideas appears to be fair game for the hard left. Women who oppose these ambitions are classed as ‘Red Tories’ or ‘Blairites’ in much the same way that Russians in the 1930s who did not entirely agree how wonderful life under Josef Stalin was were classed as Trotskyites. In the USSR, such people were routinely murdered under a quota system. It seems to be only the rule of law in this country that deters Corbyn’s followers from the following through in the same way, so they use the internet or bricks to abuse and threaten.
Already women Labour MPs are being told to stop holding surgeries as the risk of violence is too great. The violence by Corbyn supporters is being classed by the police as terrorism, which given Corbyn’s sympathies regarding international terrorists, seems appropriate. This is what passes for democracy in the Labour Party. Labour MPs are being prevented from representing their constituents’ concerns to the Government. Violence by Labour supporters is stopping Labour MPs from doing their jobs.
A woman in the Labour Party is effectively a second-class member, irrespective of her position in the party. Her gender is being used to force her to be compliant with the views of extremists. For their own safety, perhaps women should now start consider leaving Labour. It is no longer their party.
Who knows? If they join the Conservatives, they could eventually become prime minister. There is no evidence that this is possible in the Labour Party.
(Image: Garry Knight)
