Charlotte Gill

The show’s over for the Women’s Equality Party

In the post-Brexit upheaval, the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) has fallen out of sight. Its members once told us ‘WE can, WE will’, but now WEP isn’t doing anything at all. Not since 24 June when leader Sophie Walker offered her most prophetic statements to date. In Newsweek Europe, she wrote that post-Brexit, we would urgently need ‘women on the table’, and that ‘Britain leaving the EU means more women will get involved in politics’.

Little did she know her words would ring true, in the most unexpected way; as weeks later, a woman would not only be on the table, but head of it. And since Theresa May became Prime Minister, it’s been win, win, win for the ladies – with Amber Rudd, Justine Greening and Liz Truss now in some of Britain’s top roles.

It’s not been a great year for WEP, with Walker losing out on the chance of London Mayor in May. And with so many ladies running the country, its relevance looks increasingly tenuous. Now that there’s concrete evidence of gender equality in politics, I suspect WEP backers don’t know what to do with themselves; they are possibly casting their eye around for other evidence of gross sexism. Bowls teams, perhaps.

For many of my friends, WEP was hailed as a revolutionary party. But I smelt trouble from the start. I always took issue with its false premise: that women are losers in life – incapable of succeeding without its motherly hand.

Faults became clear in WEP’s speculative and poorly researched manifesto. The sort of document that makes blokes actually think women can’t be good at science. It said things like: ‘often men’s jobs are seen as an investment while women’s jobs are seen as expenses to be cut,’ with no evidence to back this statement up. WEP

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