Approach to women’s rights. Part 1

Cameron has made much of the fact that his new shadow cabinet and MPs include a roll-call of ethnic minorities, gay people and women. Theresa May, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Shadow Minister for Women, wrote an article in The Guardian, a strong pledge of support for women, in March of this year.

But scratch beneath the surface, and as with so many things with the Tory party, it’s all an elaborate hoax – airbrushed like so much else about Dave.

Since Cameron became leader, Tory MEPs have routinely block-voted against legislation which would help women have an equal status. Below is a list of some of the votes, and how they voted:

2006 – Tory MEPs voted against the commissioning of a Report on combating violence against women, including provisions to make rape within marriage a criminal offence, eliminating female genital mutilation, and improving cross-border co-operation on “honour” crimes.

2009 – abstained in a vote calling on member states to improve policies on combating violence against women, and which highlighted the importance of recognising rape within marriage as a criminal offence.

Teresa May mentioned genital mutilation, cross-border co-operation on violent crimes against women, and domestic violence as Tory priorities in her Guardian article.

2008 – Conservative MEPs voted against guidelines (which were nevertheless adopted) as part of the EU’s Growth and Jobs strategy. They included access to childcare, and targets for flexible working.

Feb 2010 – they voted against a report which looked at tackling the gender pay gap, explicitly disagreeing with the call to establish paternity leave across Europe, and against linking maternity and paternity leave.

Cameron has said “we’re going to give the right to flexibility to everyone with children under 18″, Theresa May highlights tackling inequality of pay as a part of her pledge.

Reason #7: Despite all protestations of supporting family life, Tory voting records show MEPs have consistently voted against abuse and equality legislation to help women.

Did you know that the Tories’ adviser on cuts within government, is chairman of the UKs biggest private healthcare firm, which has admitted that it will benefit from job cuts in the NHS?

Sir Peter Gershon, said that the NHS would save “£1bn to £2bn” by curbing recruitment – which estimates say translates into 20,000 to 40,000 jobs.

Sir Peter also chairs General Healthcare Group, the UK’s largest private sector healthcare firm. on their website, a strategy paper states that the NHS will face a “very severe contraction in its finance with an £8-10bn cut in real terms likely in the three years from 2011.”

It continued: “Given this lack of funding growth, there will be an increasing role for the private sector, even if NHS efficiencies can offset some of the budget pressure.”

The real rot of this is that David Cameron neglected to mention Sir Peter’s interests when he presented the efficiency savings report.

It is based on the savings noted in the report that the Conservative felt they could afford to cut back the proposed National Insurance increases.

Reason #6: Cameron’s efficiency savings take money and jobs out of the public sector and into the private.

David Cameron will do anything to maintain his image, but whether he can follow through on his promises is another matter.

And I’m not talking about policies or manifestos –  we all know that election manifestos are at best an opportunity to set out what a party would offer us in an ideal world, and it’s a naive voter who expects them to be followed through to the letter – or even to any extent – after the party is elected. So for this reason I am not going to analyse the manifesto – to try and decipher exactly where the Tories think they’re going to get the money they promise to save from (no sums in the manifesto – maybe Ashcroft will pay for it all?)

But there are some promises which we do need to take more seriously – and when caught out on these, we need to question the integrity and moral fibre of the individual in question.

So it was with interest that I read today of the soldier who confronted Cameron in what should have been a relatively easy meet-the-public format for him on his home turf in Witney.  The man said that he had spoken to him when years ago, when he had recently left the army having served in Kosovo. He had nowhere to live, a pregnant wife, and needed help. So he spoke to Cameron who promised to help him, and gave him his card. As the man told him yesterday, he made around 30 phone calls to Cameron, and not one was returned.

Not one. This betrays a contempt of his consituent which entirely undermines his desperate attempts to appear as a friend of the people. And if he can’t follow through on one simple promise to one voter as an MP, what hope is there of anything more elaborate being followed through on?

Reason #5: he is demonstrably unreliable – at worst a bare-faced liar, at best an insincere PR man.

A man is known by the company he keeps. Part 1.

We are aware that party leaders have to surround themselves with Malcolm Tucker characters to perform some of the more unsavoury tasks which would taint their carefully coiffed images. Mandelson’s and Campbell’s time in office with Labour has come to epitomise this highly intelligent, ruthless and predatory behaviour.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Conservative Party appointed Andy Coulson as Director of Communications in 2007.  Cameron may say he’s happy to allow Coulson a second chance, but given the grave nature of the things he’s done, it seems surprising that he’s at the heart of the party which likes to paint itself as the squeaky clean alternative in this election.

Just to recap – Coulson was editor of News of the World  from 2003 to 2007, during which period two thirds of the reporters who worked there commissioned the services of Steve Whittamore. Whittamore, who was jailed in 2005 for offences committed under the Data Protection Act, specialised in getting information out of confidential databases at banks and phone companies, as well as government departments including the national police computer and the HM Revenue and Customs database. Coulson resigned, which ensured that the Press Complaints Commission investigation was curtailed, which in turn ensured that Rupert Murdoch didn’t have to be questioned. When further questioned by a parliamentary Select Committee, he made the incredible claim not to have even heard of Steve Whittamore,

Between them, private investigators working for the News of the World, including Steve Whittamore and the better known Glenn Mulcaire, received hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from the paper under Coulson’s editorship. Mulcaire was a private investigator who hacked the phones of members and staff of the royal family for the NOTW’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman. And despite the widespread use of these journalistic sources, despite the huge amounts of money involved, Coulson had the audacity to deny any knowledge. This makes him either a liar or a very stupid man – able to be duped on a large scale. As we have to assume that Cameron would not hire someone he thought was stupid, he must know that he was perjuring himself, and be happy with the moral implications of this.

The footnote to this story is that both Goodman and Mulcaire have been paid cash sums by NOTW, and are thought to have signed confidentiality agreements. The two people who have sued over the extensive phone tapping which the paper carried out – Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballer Association, and publicist Max Clifford, have had their cases settled out of court, both of them receiving very generous damages on condition that the evidence is kept secret.  Neither of these actions on the part of NOTW look like the actions of an innocent party.

The other thing for which Coulson is notorious is that he was found to be responsible for a culture of bullying by an employment tribunal last November. Ex-NOTW sports reporter Matt Driscoll was paid almost £800,000 for unfair dismissal – the highest ever payout of its kind in media history.

However, perhaps Cameron’s assertion that everyone deserves a second chance just shows a streak of humanity. Strange then that he did not dismiss the bullying allegations against Gordon Brown with the same forgiving attitude. Instead he called for a full enquiry, stating “These are very serious matters … I’m sure that No 10 and the civil service in some way will want to have some sort of inquiry to get to the bottom of what has happened here.” He said this on the day that the Tory party’s old friend Christine Pratt of the so-called “National Bullying Helpline” had actually admitted that the complaints she’d claimed she’d received about Brown were actually not about him at all.

Reason #4: his Director of Communications presided over a newspaper which broke the law on a daily basis, and has been found to be responsible for bullying.

This may seem a flimsy reason. But watch the video and you’ll see why it isn’t. He’s right about everything he says, and he says it in a much cleverer and funnier way than I could.

And here’s the behind-the-scenes video.

Reason #3: Eddie Izzard says not to.