Page 16 Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 13, 2019A woman MP says
only a female Cabinet
can solve Brexit.
That isn’t just sexist
— it’s liberal fascism
at its very worst
by Sarah
Vine
S
hadow home
Secretary diane
abbott is not
someone I usually
see eye-to-eye with
on political matters, but
in the case of former
Green Party leader Caro-
line Lucas, I’m afraid I
can’t fault the old Trot.
Responding to Ms Lucas’s
frankly extraordinary idea that
the way to avoid a No-deal
Brexit is for Parliament to pass
a vote of no-confidence in the
Government, and then for an
all-female emergency Cabinet
to take over, abbott tweeted:
‘Backdoor route to a National
Government. didn’t work for
Ramsey Mcdonald [sic] and
won’t work now, whatever the
gender of the participants.’
She wasn’t the only one. Even
Emily Thornberry — one of the
women to whom Lucas
extended her invitation to join
this cross-party cabal of all the
ladies — politely declined.Coup
of course Lucas — MP for
Brighton Pavilion — has never
been part of mainstream
politics. Elected on an uncom-
promising eco-ticket, she’s also
an arch-Remainer — one of the
majority of MPs whose refusal
to accept the result of the 2016
referendum and work with the
Government on striking a deal
with Brussels is arguably — and
ironically — the principal reason
we now find ourselves on the
brink of leaving without one.
Still, even by her standards,
this proposal is extreme. Not
that she would see it that way.
In her eyes, she is mounting a
heroic last stand against ‘a
coup led by a small group of
Right-wing libertarians’ hell-
bent on implementing ‘the
most extreme No-deal version
of Brexit’ and ‘creating more
divisions, scapegoating our
friends and neighbours, and
ignoring the inequality and
democratic deficit that fuelled
the Brexit vote’. Quite the
heroine, our Caroline.
Elected politicians should be
‘setting aside our political
differences in the national
interest’ in a bid to work
towards ‘reconciliation’, she
says. Not in itself such a bad
idea, although arguably she’s
dreamt it up three years and
two prime ministers too late.In any case, if she’s so keen on
reconciliation, why didn’t she
set aside her own personal
views when Mrs May put for-
ward a deal the EU had
accepted — and vote with,
rather than against, the
withdrawal agreement?
and this is before we have
even got onto Lucas’s utterly
bonkers’ assertion that the
reason we need a Cabinet of
women is that the Gordian
knot of Brexit can only ever be
untied if we exclude men from
the process. what’s more, she
has subsequently had to
apologise for suggesting an ‘all-
white list of women’ for her
proposed emergency Cabinet.
one might suggest her argu-
ment is somewhat undermined
by the fact that we’ve just had
a female PM who, despite her
best and most persistent
efforts, failed to get Parliament
to agree on anything.
Yet Lucas insists women
‘have shown they can bring a
different perspective to crises,
are able to reach out to those
they disagree with and cooper-
ate to find solutions’. She says
they are less ‘tribal’ than men,
more prepared to compromise.
To back up this sweeping
generalisation, she explains
fatuously that ‘it was two
women, Betty williams and
Mairead Corrigan, who began
the Peace People movement
during the worst of the Trou-
bles in Northern Ireland; it was
two women, Christiana
Figueres and Ségolène Royal,
who were key to the signing of
the Paris Climate agreement’.
This makes about as much
sense as those who have
suggested — and there are a
few — that Boris Johnson will
triumph where May fell for the
simple reason that he is a man.
again, nonsense.
The truth is, whether a per-
son succeeds or fails has noth-
ing to do with gender, as it has
nothing to do with race or reli-
gion. Margaret Thatcher’s for-
midable success proved that,
as have countless other women
at the top of their fields.
There are just as many capa-ble women as there are capable
men, and vice versa, both
within and without politics. It’s
ability that matters, and some
people are just more blessed
with it than others.
what is so striking about
Lucas’s proposal is not just the
blatant sexism of her decision
to discount the abilities of 50
per cent of the population —
which is, of course, breathtak-
ingly hypocritical, since she
can’t stop impressing on us
how committed she is to the
causes of equality.
It’s also this kind of dogma
that undermines the very cause
for which feminists have been
fighting for decades. It implies
we need positive discrimina-
tion because we’re not good
enough to make it on equal
terms with men.
what’s more, her claim that
women are less tribal, and
therefore prepared to compro-
mise to find solutions, under-
mines the female sex further. It
paints women as not prepared
to stick to their guns, who’ll
forgo their principles for the
sake of an easy solution. above
all, it’s a complete fantasy.Stupidity
I don’t know where Ms Lucas
has been sitting for the past
few years, but, in case she
hasn’t noticed, getting any sort
of cross-party consensus in the
house of Commons on any-
thing more testing than the
provision of paperclips for the
civil service is highly unlikely.
The idea that a self-appointed
multi-party coalition of (often
very tribal) women would suc-
ceed where an actual female
PM could not is for the birds.
But if naivety tinged with stu-
pidity were all Lucas were
guilty of, it wouldn’t be so bad.
after all, if elected politicians
can’t indulge in the belief that
they can re-shape the world,
who can? No, it’s the fact that,
as well as being completely pie-
in-the-sky, her plan is also
arrogant, non-democratic and
undeniably elitist.
what she is effectively pro-posing is an all-female dicta-
torship where the only require-
ment to sign up is that you have
a womb and agree with her.
This is an example of so-
called liberal fascism at its fin-
est: the notion that your own
world view is so inherently
superior to anyone else’s that
those who do not conform to it
forfeit all rights to participate
in the democratic process.
It’s a kind of dangerous self-
righteousness that is cropping
up ever more. In groups such
as Extinction Rebellion, for
example, who believe the moral
superiority of their argument
about climate change means
they have the right to impose
their agenda on everyone else,
disrupting lives to the point
where — as happened a few
weeks ago in a motorway block-
ade — they stopped a son see-
ing his dying father in Bristol.Populist
when played the recording of
the man’s anguish by a local
radio station, one protester,
Zoe Jones, simply said: ‘I still
believe we are doing the right
thing,’ adding that, distressing
as it was, it wouldn’t stop her
protesting because ‘we are all
humans’. only some, of course,
are more human than others.
It’s the kind of mindset that
carries chilling echoes of the
past: the expression of an arro-
gant, self-entitled elite whose
refusal to acknowledge any-
thing other than its own view
— in this case, the notion that
Brexit is a massive right-wing
conspiracy and not a genuine
demand for change from the
majority of British voters —
makes them blind to the risks
they take in dismissing anyone
who offends them.
Inevitably, if the electorate
can’t get their wishes respected
by mainstream politicians, they
will turn to more populist fig-
ures to get the job done. and,
as we have seen, the path of
populism is not a pretty one.
The truth is, that until MPs
accept the referendum result,
in which the British people
voted to leave the EU, there is
not a man, woman or child who
can clean up this mess.
If Caroline Lucas really wants
to ‘find a way forward’, she
should stop playing Fantasy
Feminist Cabinet, and concen-
trate on respecting the wishes
of the people who pay her
salary: the British electorate.COMMENT
Our beleaguered high
streets need help
CoULd the alarm bells be ringing any
louder on the high street?
Fifty major retailers are pleading with the
Government to fix the broken business
rate system and bring some relief to our
embattled high streets.
one in ten town centre shops are now
empty, the worst figure for four years.
Businesses are struggling with competition
from online shopping, out-of-town outlets
with plentiful parking – and penal taxes.
The result? The slow death of once-
bustling thoroughfares, blighted by
boarded-up premises which in turn drive
more potential customers away.
of course, governments cannot legislate
for shopping habits. But do we really want
a country dotted with ghost towns? Small
business is at the heart of Tory philosophy
and must be nurtured. Yet, while retail
accounts for 5 per cent of the economy, it
pays a quarter of business rate tax, netting
the Exchequer £31billion this year.
our traditional retailers need some TLC.
It’s time to give these hard-pressed wealth-
creators a break. a tax break, to be exact.
The joke’s on Lucas
GREEN MP Caroline Lucas suggests the
creation of an temporary all-female unity
cabinet to stop No deal. women, she
instructs us, are less tribal than men and
more capable of establishing trust.
Forget that she could have prevented No
deal by voting for Theresa May’s
withdrawal agreement, the jaw-dropping
aspect of this proposal is Miss Lucas’s
bigoted attitude towards men.
Imagine a male MP suggesting females
were temperamentally unsuited to deciding
on vital matters! his political life expectancy
would be measured in minutes.
we have news for Miss Lucas: Possessing
the Y chromosome does not make you less
trustworthy or incapable of compromise.
Some women actually voted for Brexit.
This absurd politician has achieved one
thing: Unifying female colleagues against
her after choosing an all-white fantasy
cabinet. She has now been forced to
apologise. You really couldn’t make it up.
Cost of hands-free
USING your mobile phone hands-free while
driving is as dangerous as holding it and
should be banned, the Commons transport
committee says. This will be especially
unwelcome to those who drive for a living.
But experts say a driver using a mobile –
hand-held or hands-free – is four times
more likely to be involved in a collision. In
fact, drivers perform below par even five
minutes after a conversation ends.
Using hands-free is currently permissible,
but if it causes you to lose control it can be
a factor in a prosecution. The question now
is: Should we go further?
There were 43 deaths and 135 serious
injuries caused by collisions involving
mobiles in 2017 – and accidents involving
the devices are on the rise. we also know
numbers of traffic police have fallen,
making it less likely that offenders will be
caught – and prosecutions have plunged.
In one of its most successful campaigns,
the Mail won tougher penalties for drivers
caught tapping away at the wheel. Before
extending the law we need to clamp down
on offenders risking lives by holding
devices. an toothless law is no law at all.
÷
LaBoUR uses the Glorious Twelfth to
attack grouse shooting, claiming it
harms wildlife and adds to global warming.
This has nothing to do with the environment
and everything to do with class war.
owners of grouse moors are among some
of the most dedicated conservationists in
the country, preserving endangered species
and providing jobs and investment.
This ‘row’ has been manufactured by a
Marxist wolf in environmentalist sheep’s
clothing – a transparent ploy that should
be blasted with both barrels.