Women have been promoted, but there’s little to celebrate
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Version 0 of 1. The election campaign is now in full swing – although it may be the campaign to elect George Osborne as leader of the Tories rather than the campaign to elect a Conservative government. Either way, it’s gloomy news a full 10 months before polling day. Slightly better news is that there will be some very able women making the Tory case along with the able women on Labour’s front bench. (This is a survey from which the Lib Dems have largely excluded themselves by failing to provide enough female candidates). With the smart, quick Liz Truss in environment – possibly not the job she’d have most wanted, but it’ll challenge her ability to master a complex brief – and Nicky Morgan in education to schmooze the teachers and embed the reforms, and the highly TV-literate Esther McVey tackling the jobs issue, the Tory strategists will no doubt be congratulating themselves on a good line-up for the media campaign. At least that’s the line that’s filtered out of Downing Street in the most eye-catching rearrangement of political talent in 50 years, since the last great actor-manager Harold Macmillan staged the night of the long knives. And it was all broadcast largely from the prime minister’s own Twitter account. This week’s “moment in history” question could be to judge which will change the way we live more profoundly – a) the use of Twitter on consecutive days to write a novel and to control the political agenda, or b) on the same consecutive days, the final acceptance by the Church of England of women as bishops and the promotion of more women than ever before to a Conservative cabinet. Esther McVey continues as Minister for Employment and Disabilities. She will now attend Cabinet. #Reshuffle Such an extensive reshuffle at the tail end of a parliament is unmistakably about buffing up the party image in the hope that the election offer appears enticingly fresh – so different from the stale old male-dominated coalition – and the Tories can look as if at least some of them speak the same language as the electorate. It is not about policy or political ideas or even administrative competence. It is all about image. The way that Cameron has allowed the reshuffle to be seen as being all about his women problem will end up leaving the women in question diminished. It is one thing to recognise that positive discrimination as a general principle is necessary to clear a way through the encrusted prejudice of generations, quite another to be labelled as its particular beneficiary. That is tough and unfair on the women involved, and it will undermine even the dodgy ambition behind their promotion. These are able people. Their appointments should be a recognition of that, a part of the normalisation of political life, another small step in its excruciatingly slow progress. Instead they – and with them the prospects of another generation of women – may be mortally impaled on the party leadership’s obsession with day to day media management that reduces them to appendages in the manipulation of the message. When it comes back to the zeitgeist question, I reckon Twitter beats women. |