Local voices will challenge PM’s desire for power
IN THIS newspaper 11 months ago, I acknowledged that a majority in our region had voted for Brexit. What’s more, this wasn’t just about the alienated and dispossessed. Many businesspeople had also cast their vote to leave. My reaction was “well it’s down to all of us now to make a success, whether we were for or against leaving”.
What I could not have foreseen at the time was that there would be a General Election on June 8 in which the Prime Minister would try and rerun the questions relating to our relationship with Europe in a blatant attempt to eliminate as much opposition and questioning as possible, both inside and outside the Palace of Westminster.
How could I have foreseen this? After all, the Prime Minister had given us an absolute pledge that she would run the full “fixed term” Parliament – so much for the legislation passed to provide for five-year terms.
Nothing has happened since she was nominated as Prime Minister that would warrant her using the necessity of a landslide majority as any kind of bargaining counter with the other 27 members of the European Union during the negotiations.
They are negotiations, and it doesn’t matter what the majority in the House of Commons might be for any particular party, the issues will be the same and the power of the 27 will remain the same.
In other words, we can huff and puff as much as we like and try and pretend that what Theresa May really needs is unfettered authority – but the people have voted to leave.
Our negotiating hand is not the majority in the House of Commons, but the persuasion of the self-interest of the other 27 EU countries in reaching a sensible and lasting deal which will benefit everyone.
That is why this election is neither necessary nor comfortable. Uncomfortable not just because my party is way behind in the opinion polls, but because there is a danger that the predominant narrative is one of the presidential contest between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, a re-run of the Iron Lady, speaking from – and for – the Home Counties.
But this is not a presidential election. It’s about who represents you in the constituency in which you live, and on behalf of the community where your children go to school or where your gran is in need of social care.
It is those issues that require a local voice to be heard in the Palace of Westminster. Not the handover of power to one woman, but the sharing of power in a democratic assembly which allows alternative points of view and yes, a challenge, to be heard and taken seriously.
So let me put a word in for other women standing in this election. You are not, man or woman, voting for Theresa May. For instance, if you live in Halifax you will be making a judgement on the hard work of the sitting MP Holly Lynch. The same applies across the whole of Yorkshire.
If you count my good friend Anna Turley in Redcar as being part of Yorkshire (and I still do), there are 15 women representing this great county of ours – all of them Labour. Fifteen voices in a cohort of only 29 per cent of the House of Commons who reflect over 50 per cent of the population – women. A loss of any single one of them would in my book be a blow for truly hearing the voice of and representing the needs of the people of Yorkshire.
Nationally, Labour has selected more than two in five of candidates who are women compared with just over one in four for the Conservatives.
Yes, we have had two women prime ministers from the Conservative Party, but a woman is not what this is about – this is about representation from the bottom-up and not the top down.
This is not about gesturism any more than Theresa May parading herself as the tough woman – “mummy” as some Conservative MPs came to call her over recent months. If someone is useless, whatever their gender, they’re useless.
So let us hope that Yorkshire does what it does best. It ignores what’s going on in London and it doesn’t fall for the undoubted charm of those born and brought up in the Home Counties. It’s about the grit of everyday life. Knowing what really matters and trying to do something to improve the lot of those around us.
In other words it’s about making a difference to those who don’t have wealth and power, who don’t have the privilege as I’ve had of being on a public platform and, above all, don’t have friends in high places.
The danger now is that our democracy will become dysfunctional, the checks and balances will be diminished. Theresa May seems to believe that she embodies the whole of the nation’s will and therefore speaks for everyone.
Democracy is about ensuring that this delusion lasts no further than June 8.