Political Doodle Sketch - British Current Affairs, Politics, & Economics

Polly Toynbee writes an interesting column in the Guardian - always idiosyncratic and usually informative. But, as with all idiosyncratic writings, Toynbee should always be fact-checked, as the blog Factchecking Pollyanna highlights. In a recent article entitled "Why Stockholm syndrome should terrify New Labour", Toynbee concentrates, for some bizarre reason, on the so-called "importance" of the psephological myth that is the "female vote". Quite what the "female vote" is, and quite which policies should appeal to women specifically, has never been satisfactorily explained.

There are statistics which suggest the existence of a gender gap at the ballot box. As veteran pollster Robert Worcester says in an article on the MORI website:

Thirty-eight per cent of those women who voted gave their support to Labour, 32 per cent to the Conservatives and 22 per cent to the Liberal Democrats. By comparison, men voted 34 per cent each for Labour and Conservatives and 23 per cent for the Lib Dems. If just women had voted, Labour's majority would have been nearly 90, and Blair's 'comfort level' would be much higher than the 66-seat overall majority he now has. If only men had voted, he would be facing a wafer-thin majority of only 23 on the Labour benches, many of them anxious to see him off.

There was actually a statistically insignificant gender gap in the 1997 and 2001 general elections. So to take the 2005 statistics, as Toynbee does, and assume that genders constitute an electoral bloc, so that women and men may be wooed separately, is fallacious. Toynbee consistently assumes that the interests of women are aligned - "women are more green, family-minded and wooried about work-life balance". Says Toynbee:

Here's the other great lesson from Sweden. They forgot about women - yes, even in Sweden. New Labour has won the past three elections only on the strength of women's votes - yet Labour too has forgotten the importance of connecting with them. Sweden's women ministers fumed during the campaign as Persson ignored the party's record on childcare and maternity and paternity leave, which should have been the Social Democrats' proudest electoral assets. He let the right set the agenda with traditional male politics when it is the women-friendly subjects that win the Social Democrat vote. Forgetting about women seems a peril of power.

But in opposition look how Cameron's campaign is devoted to pleasing women, in tone, style, words and demeanour: the polls tell him women are more green, family-minded and worried about work-life balance. Never mind if it's all empty mood music, trading on what Labour has done without promising anything more than mild exhortation; Cameron has the right tunes. New Labour came to power understanding what women want - but they have lost it and Cameron is winning the women's vote.

War has done Labour all kinds of damage - but especially among women voters. Even in realms where Blair was once undisputed champion of the women's vote, he has chased them away with strident emphasis on punishing children and blaming parents. Failure to work with the grain in reforming health and schools is alienating the women who staff them and use them most.

Yet consider what Labour has done for women. Labour's best narrative is the story of its family revolution, with Sure Start for babies, universal childcare, after-school and breakfast clubs, domestic-violence laws, tax credits and the children's trust fund. Why has so much political capital on brilliant social programmes - noticed most by mothers - been allowed to vanish from the political radar? Sweden's Social Democrats are asking these same questions - far too late. It will take Gordon Brown more than intimate interviews about his children to recover this lost ground.

The Parties_, Britain_, SPL_

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

SPL : Polly Toynbee - factchecking feminism

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