Harriet wants more. Harriet always wants more.

/ Mike Buchanan

Our thanks to Stu for this. An excerpt:

Ms Harman, who has campaigned for longer periods of paid maternity leave in the UK, said a policy of six months’ paid leave would put MPs in line with the civil service.

The former Labour deputy leader said MPs should be able to nominate a full-time paid “maternity cover” to represent the constituency in their absence.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that we need more female MPs of child-bearing age.

Did Hattie have over-indulgent parents, who gave her whatever she wanted when she pouted and stamped her feet, as a child? Probably, and they must therefore shoulder much of the blame. At 67 Hattie’s still acting like a spoiled little brat, all too used to getting her own way. You have to feel sorry for her long-suffering husband Jack Dromey MP. Hattie didn’t campaign for an all-women shortlist when he wanted to become an MP. In his shoes (shudder!) I’d be saying with monotonous regularity:

Harriet, dear, would you like some cheese with that whine?

A blog piece from 2014, with a link to her Whiny Feminist of the Month award, is here.

7 thoughts on “Harriet wants more. Harriet always wants more.”

  1. Actually, an MP falling pregnant should be required to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds, ie resign, immediately. Their absence disenfranchises their constituents and that is undemocratic.
    Someone off sick for that length of time, regardless of gender, would be expected to resign.
    Personally I would reduce maternity entitlement to the US level of 12 weeks unpaid, firms employing 15 or less are exempt and no employer should be required to support back to back pregnancies, when they come back from maternity leave pregnant again.

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    • And the evidence shows that this would really help in the key feminist goal of increasing women’s representation in management esp. higher management and in much more varied jobs. Both the US and countries such as Italy which have much less generous maternity leave and other “flexible working” actually have proportionately more women in executive positions and women work in much more varied industries (one actually sees female “bin men” in southern Europe for instance). As with many developing nations too poor for state funded “time off” women entering work have no option other than working as much and hard as men. And so they reap the same rewards and pay the same price.
      When the Swedes looked into why they so conspicuously fail to have female senior managers and few women working outside their public sector the research showed it was precisely the many options to do less work that “held women back”. Of course their response was voluntary then “compulsory” “paternity leave”, neither of which have made much impact.

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      • Yes, I wonder how many Swedish men having to take compulsory paternity leave park the child with Granny and take casual work. When SPL came in in the U.K. Business Innovation and Skills anticipated the take up would be under 4% but it turned out much lower and only was taken when the woman was the significantly higher earner. I would expect over time we will see that the pay and prospects of men taking SPL will fall behind those of women working full time.
        As I understand it in middle America SAHMs are far more common than they are here, presumably because couples realise if they want children they have to be able to manage on one wage – and working two or three jobs is quite normal, which is presumably how they manage – the man works very long hours indeed

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  2. My path crossed Harman’s when I was the SDP’s Peckham organiser, so I know at least that part of Harman’s autobiography is ‘conveniently’ written.

    We knew the sitting Labour MP was terminally ill, so we faced a by-election. However, Harman seemed totally ignorant even though she had already been selected to replace him. Instead, Harman decided to get pregnant (her words) and go to France on holiday.

    We also knew Harman was unmarried pregnant and yes we considered using that in the campaign but that was the dirty tactic of Labour’s left, which Harman also describes in her book, and the very reason the SDP had parted from Labour. So, we didn’t.

    We also didn’t because that was the 1980’s, not the 1950’s. Peckham had thousands of unmarried mothers and shot-gun marriages. Attacking Harman for being the same as many voters would merely boost her vote. So again, we kept off the topic.

    Before the campaign proper started, Harman decided to save her blushes at being called an unmarried mother – in ‘labour’ for labour. Harman and Dromey married discretely. No in-laws, no celebration. Again her description.

    Don’t feel sorry for Jack Dromey. My experience of him was a bully with short man syndrome who threatened me at the count for forcing his marriage to Ms Harman. In her acceptance speech, Harman attacked the SDP for a sin of which she was guilty, but the SDP had kept quiet.

    Of the three candidates, Taverne (SDP) Redwood (Cons) and Harman, I judged Harman had the greatest opportunity to progress. Having won a ‘safe seat’, a stone’s throw from Parliament, Harman was well qualified – a solicitor – and very attractive. Like it or not, good looks are an asset in politics. Maybe she would become another Barbara Castle? Maybe even Labours 1st. female PM?

    As labour’s old guard died off or retired, Harman rose like flotsam through the party ranks all the way to the top. However, Harman never took one of the great offices of state. Why?

    Harman tells us in her biography. Once elected, she considered her job to be fighting for women’s rights, justice, and defeating Thatcher. That’s not the role of an MP, who is bound to serve the people – all of them. Not just half of them. What would she do when women’s rights were achieved, when Thatcher inevitable resigned?

    Labour has always been in the clutches of the far left. The nasty left. Thrown out by Kinnock, a very brave politician, the nasty left re-emerged after Blair. I may not vote for Labour, even Blair, but without an effective decent opposition, democracy does not work. Whatever your view at the time, look at the disaster that Iraq became and Brexit could.

    Just as the Conservatives always need someone to save them from naked, exploitative, capitalism, Labour always needs someone to provide strong rational leadership, to save Labour from the negative politics of opposition for opposition’s sake, from the ugly politics of envy. When disaster looms, that’s what men do. As Kinnock did. Take charge of the helm even when they fear there is no hope. Risk their careers, their lives, save the women and children first. In these equal days, why not a woman? Why not Harman? A woman who asserted women were just as capable as men and the job of political leader requires no great physical strength.

    Harman could have stepped into role. Harman was made party leader, not once but twice. Each time refused to be any more than a caretaker until a man came along to risk his head above the trenches.

    Why? Ms Harman, could have been Labour’s Thatcher, Israel’s Golda Meir, Germany’s Angela Merkel. Why not?

    Again Harman’s biography tells us. It was always someone else’s fault. Another pregnancy. The truth is Harman’s glass ceiling was self-imposed as it is with most feminists. Harman’s autobiography is appropriately titled ‘A woman’s Work’

    Don’t feel sorry for Jack Dromey. A Labour leftie, who screamed the politics of envy whilst living very comfortably on the backs of workers, as Labour’s Bessie Braddock put it. He also took a safe comfortable job at the tax-payer’s expense. MP for Birmingham constituency, Dromey has survived many scandals. Cash for peerages, illegal political donations, and failure to declare income. Dromey and Harman live in leafy Suffolk.

    Politicians are always self-serving. Feminism is a social class politics. Feminists are self-serving politicians.

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      • Sure. Peckham was the SDP’s first by election so sucked in a lot of workers. Tavern brought in his own ‘agent’. I cannot be sure the ‘pregnant unmarried mother’ line was never used on the doorstep, but never in any literature or any recorded interview, and anyone using that line would have been frown on. In her autobiography, Harman confirms our reason, she claims to have gained sympathy from voters. She also acknowledges she was less tan magnanimous in her acceptance speech and came in for criticism from her own party.

        Harman also claims to have won by a healthy majority. The truth is we cut Labour’s majority from some 20,000 to under 4,000. I did not enjoy that election. With the exception of David Owen and his people, SDP’s ex-Labour activists were control freaks. I moved out of Southwark to Tower Hamlets, and there I joined the Liberals. A far better political party.

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