Harman's foot-in-mouth feminism

Harriet Harman is right to suggest that having the top jobs in the Labour party filled exclusively by men is a terrible and outdated idea, as it would be for any political party. But her reasoning is flawed and ridiculous.

She explains her objection to "a men only team of leadership" by suggesting that "men cannot be left to run things on their own". Which is, of course, entirely untrue, not to mention lazily misandrist. Men can be left to run things on their own - indeed, they managed to run central government all by themselves for a number of centuries without setting the Commons on fire or leaving the Civil Service strewn with empty kegs, takeaway pizza-boxes and porn. What Harman totally fails to do is to make a case for why we should not be satisfied with having men in sole charge of government, even if they're competent.

We want an equal government because only an equal government can truly comprehend the interests of the people it serves. Of course, the past thirty years is littered with examples of brave male politicians who have worked tirelessly to advance women's rights - John McDonnell and Dr Evan Harris - and female politicians like Thatcher, Dorries and Widdecombe who have done anything but. But even male MPs working for women's rights have always done so in a context of solidarity with female ministers and women of power, advancing the female agenda as only they know how - consider, for example, Dr Harris' partnership with Dr Wendy Savage in countering last year's HFE bill to clamp down on abortion rights.

Her idiotic comments will, of course, be taken gleefully out of context by rightist pundits over the next few days, and there have already been charges that Harman is anti-meritocratic, with Prescott himself weighing in to say ”why take away from the party the right to choose its leaders on the basis of ability? You can’t dictate equality.”

Well, of course you can’t, John. Since Harriet seems pathologically unable to properly explain herself right now, let me: if we were a truly meritocratic society, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. If we had a truly meritocratic system that picked its leaders on the basis of ability and competence, one of the two top jobs would invariably go to a woman – if not both. To claim otherwise is to admit to a belief that women are somehow innately inferior.

Later in the same interview Harman goes on to suggest, more sensibly, that "in a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men running the show themselves." As Yvonne Roberts put it today:

"The idea that the individuals running an organisation ought to reflect the market that the organisation is trying to serve is increasingly common practice (ie it generates profits) in the commercial world – so why is it deemed such a revolutionary concept in politics?"

Why indeed? There are plenty of reasons to wish for a balanced government; productivity and efficiency is certainly one, which is the point that I suspect Harman was blunderingly trying to make in the first place. Genuine democracy - a government of the people, for the people, 51% of whom are women - is another. But we need to start being brave enough to make those arguments upfront, without apologising. If we don't, we'll risk doing what Harman has just done, and making a very reasonable suggestion sound callously anti-meritocratic and misandrist.