Choose candidates on their merits, not on their gender
Pressure is being put on uncommitted Labour AMs to ensure a woman is on the ballot paper when they elect a new leader. Chief reporter Martin Shipton argues that having a token woman candidate would be an insult to gender equality
IT’S five months since Carwyn Jones announced that he would be standing down as Welsh Labour leader and First Minister, and before long it will become clear how his successor will be elected.
What we know already is that under party rules any AM hoping to be a candidate in the leadership election will require nominations from five AMs apart from themselves.
Just two politicians have achieved that target: Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford, the favourite, and Health Secretary Vaughan Gething.
Mr Gething has now issued a challenge to colleagues who have not nominated a leadership candidate, suggesting they formally back a female. Presumably he means Eluned Morgan, as she is the only woman AM to have put herself forward.
In his statement mooting the idea, Mr Gething said: “[It] cannot be right that this election will be contested by two men, especially when Welsh Labour in the Assembly has within it a group of extraordinarily talented women AMs.
“It strikes me as unthinkable that one of them will not join Mark and I as we set out our stalls for the future of Welsh Labour.”
Rather ambiguously, he went on to state: “I wouldn’t appear on an all-male panel. I couldn’t defend not even trying to act so that the Welsh Labour leadership contest isn’t solely an all-male contest.”
His team clarified that this did not mean he would boycott hustings meetings if he and Mr Drakeford were the only candidates.
He concluded his statement by saying: “I sincerely believe that the campaign will be all the poorer if the candidates represent only half of those living in the country we seek to lead.
“There is still the time – and still the numbers – to give Welsh Labour the campaign it needs and the debate Wales deserves.
“We will be rightly judged as having failed if we pass this opportunity up.”
On social media Labour women AMs have come in for criticism because they haven’t nominated a female candidate.
The implication is that by backing a male candidate instead they have somehow betrayed their own gender.
Such criticism has not come from Mr Gething, who is in no position to use such an argument: four of the five nominations he has received have come from women AMs, while six female AMs have nominated Mr Drakeford.
At the time she declared for Mr Drakeford, I asked Lesley Griffiths, the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, why she was backing him rather than a woman. She replied: “My view is it would be very good to see a woman on the ballot paper.
“However, you have to choose the best person for the job. Since Carwyn announced he was standing down, I have looked at every member of the group and the only person who’s come forward who I feel I could offer my full support to is Mark Drakeford.”
I think Lesley Griffiths called it absolutely correctly. AMs have a duty to nominate the person they think would be best for the job, regardless of their gender. To do otherwise would demean their role as part of the nominating cohort.
Superficially, Vaughan Gething’s appeal to colleagues to facilitate a woman candidate may appear to be a generous act. Ultimately, though, it appears to me to be little more than tokenism.
He says he wants a woman’s name on the ballot paper, but he clearly doesn’t want her to win: that’s an outcome he wants for himself. So the role of a woman candidate would be to salve the consciences of powerful men who would yet again provide the victor.
A token candidate is a patronised candidate. They are an insult to the cause they are meant to represent. If Eluned Morgan, or another woman, is to appear on the leadership ballot paper, let her do so not because she happens to be a woman, but because enough of her colleagues think she is the best person for the job.
We all know that women seeking public office have been discriminated against in the past – and to a lesser degree that remains the case today. That is why it was important to introduce measures aimed at redressing the imbalance like all-women shortlists and – in a Welsh context – constituency twinning.
All-women shortlists have enabled many talented women to get selected and then elected – who might otherwise have struggled to do so.
On the other hand it can’t be denied that there have been occasions when they were imposed selectively – and not on seats earmarked for a favoured man. Most of us can come up with examples.
It seems to me absolutely right to introduce procedural measures that make it easier for women to be selected as election candidates. But when it comes to leadership, decisions have to be taken on a non-gender basis.
It would be as reprehensible for women to vote for female candidates simply because they were women as it would for men to vote for male candidates because they were men. Everyone entitled to vote should do so on merit alone.
Politicians should be judged on their performance, not on their gender. I take the view that Theresa May is a weak Prime Minister not because she happens to be a woman, but because I don’t believe she has the leadership skills required for the job.
I didn’t like Margaret Thatcher either, but I would never describe her as a weak Prime Minister. She knew what she wanted, and she went about getting it. Today’s Welsh politicians – both female and male – have to deal with the consequences.
Running a government is a non-gender-specific responsibility. Sometimes the best person for the job is a man, sometimes a woman. Under Welsh Labour’s rules, it’s AMs who currently decide whose names should appear on the ballot paper.
The rules may change. But whatever the mechanism is, the candidates who go forward deserve to be chosen for their merits, not because they deserve special consideration because of their gender. The problems they need to tackle are tough and getting tougher.
I don’t believe any potential leader wants to be seen as a token anything.