Louise Mensch’s local paper reports this morning that the Conservative MP will this morning announce that she is resigning her seat after struggling to balance family life with the demands of parliament.
The Northamptonshire Telegraph reports Mensch saying:
‘I am completely devastated. It’s been unbelievably difficult to manage family life. We have been trying to find a way forward with the Prime Minister’s office but I just can’t spend as much time with my children as I want to.’
Mensch had told the Guardian last September about the pressures she was experiencing on her family life, and she left a select committee hearing with James Murdoch early to collect her children from the school run because she’d promised them she always would do on a Thursday. I understand that the resignation is unlikely to come as a shock to her constituents. She is married to the manager of Metallica, who lives in New York, and her children are in her constituency, while she spends half her week in Westminster. The by-election for her Corby and East Northamptonshire constituency will take place on the same day as the police commissioner elections – 15 November. Expect a few cheeky questions to the Mayor of London about whether he’d be tempted by it, even though it is too early for him to make a move if he does plan to leap across the Thames. It is also a marginal seat, with a majority of 1,895, so Labour may well be able to take back the seat on a wet November’s night when the government is struggling in the polls. A more interesting debate will be the inevitable examination of whether Mensch’s resignation suggests parliament needs to do more to accommodate female MPs with children, or whether these were exceptional circumstances, which they do appear to be. UPDATE, 11.20am: The Standard’s Pippa Crerar tweets that Boris has already ruled himself out of the Corby race:‘I’m sure Corby is a lovely town but I have a fantastic job running the best big city on the planet.’
Comments