Rosie Duffield’s magnificently rancorous resignation of the Labour whip has reduced the number of MPs on the government side who are able accurately to identify what a ‘woman’ is by about 30 per cent. This is, then, a grave loss to Sir Keir Starmer, who could have wheeled Rosie out every time he was asked the tricky question and told his interlocutors: ‘Ask her, she seems to know. I haven’t a clue. I have been shown diagrams, of course, many of them in full colour. But a proper definition still eludes me because, for me and the vast majority of my colleagues on the left, such things as diagrams and scientific facts are easily trumped by the post-truth wish–fulfilment pleading of shrill lunatics.’
The more a bloke professes his status as a feminist, the tighter the chicks should grab their canisters of mace
I cannot remember a newly elected government losing one of its MPs so quickly and with such an expression of contempt and disgust, nor one which has so speedily won the scorn of the people who voted for it. Duffield, a wholly admirable MP for whom I once voted, never seemed to me to be on the hard left of the party – rather, she is idiosyncratic soft left and, crucially, not terribly concerned about her own career. In her letter to her erstwhile leader, Duffield described in full Starmer’s political ineptitude and lack of principle. Later she expanded upon the theme, suggesting that the government was in the hands of a group of ‘lads’: ‘They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs and I was really hoping for better, but it wasn’t to be.’
This is what happens when you let them vote, these women-people. They start getting really arsey. Perhaps we should have let them throw themselves in front of horses and simply put it down to the time of the month, rather than caving in and letting them march towards the polling booths. What interests me however, is the apparent problem which left-wing men have with women – which may well stem from an inability to identify a woman in the first place. After all, if there is no essential difference between the two sexes then we may as well forget about feminism, because it cannot by definition exist.
Or perhaps it is a little more complex than that. Those who are on the left believe not simply that they are correct about stuff, but also that they are morally good and that those who oppose them are immoral scum. The left has always been swathed in self-righteousness, of course – a consequence of believing in historical inevitability, I suppose: we are ordained to triumph. It also seems to be the case that on those vexed identity issues, the left believes it can do no wrong because it is signed up to the whole shebang. How can a liberal man be ‘sexist’ when he is so obviously on the ‘right side of history’? And so they behave however the hell they like, inoculated from opprobrium by the simple fact that when it comes to issues such as abortion, glass ceilings, gender pay gaps etc, they always vote in the right way. Therefore they cannot possibly be sexist.
And yet if you look at the complaints of Rosie Duffield and then turn your eyes to the gentlemen who provoked the whole #MeToo movement, notice that the transgressors, in almost every case, are liberal–lefties. Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, the even more odious Bill Cosby – all lefties whose respect for women was, of course, beyond doubt, despite those assaults and stuff. The truth is that the more a bloke professes his status as a feminist, the tighter the chicks should grab their canisters of mace. Convinced of their own inviolable rectitude, they believe themselves beyond the realms of accusation and indeed often seem very surprised when the accusations arise. This is not to say that the behaviour of conservative men towards women is always exemplary – but in many cases a certain old-fashioned chivalry does pertain. A chivalry which may well anger a feminist, but tends to act nonetheless as a means of self-restraint. The modern left has not found a suitable replacement for chivalry.
The left’s approach to race issues is very similar. Compare the Labour front bench with the Conservative front bench, and remember what party it was that first had a person of colour as foreign secretary, chancellor of the Exchequer and prime minister. Labour patronises black and Asian people, telling them they will never get anywhere without the party’s help in this corrosively racist country. The right, meanwhile, empowers them, much as it has done simply and effectively with women. I suppose it might also be the case that people of colour who join the Labour party are rather less talented than people of colour who join the Tories (or the SDP, or Reform).
But we are getting ourselves into difficult waters here. All I would add is that if your country were in a desperate crisis, who would you prefer to help us all out of it? David Lammy and Clive Lewis? Or Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch and Priti Patel?
Almost all of the holes Labour has dug for itself stem directly from the misapprehension of those in the party that they have a monopoly on morality, that they cannot do wrong because they mean well. It is there in the fatal failure when designing policies to put more faith in hope than in examining potential outcomes, though outcomes are really what matters. It is there in the blitheness with which they dismiss all those accusations of freeloading and greed while kicking the pensioners in the teeth. ‘How can you think this of us?’ they ask, plaintively, not understanding that buying into the left-liberal worldview leads directly to such a consequence. As we shall see time and again over the next five years.
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