“Space is very limited and we’re already oversubscribed; sorry,” came the email reply to my request to be accredited for Tony Blair’s interview with the editor of Prospect magazine.
Since there were plenty of empty seats in the media area at the event, one could think the former Labour leader wasn’t feeling up to any gags at his expense with the Chilcot report due to be published in just over a month’s time.
But let’s be charitable. Let’s assume that the former prime minister’s intensive therapy for his narcissistic megalomania has begun to pay dividends and that, even if he hasn’t quite given up on his plans to start another ground war in the Middle East, he has at least learned to delay expanding on his really important views on the EU, which probably would not have existed without him, as he did not want to be seen to be adding his name to the long tally of men who have so far dominated the referendum debate.
If so, Blair’s altruism had only limited effect. There were just 18 chairs laid out for a Labour in Europe event hosted by Harriet Harman, Angela Eagle, Seema Malhotra and Kate Green and one or two were still empty by the time it started. If women are fed up with the referendum being turned into a male playground battle for the leadership of the Conservative party, there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for the Labour women’s efforts to redress the gender balance.
Harman and Eagle did not look unduly bothered by the empty spaces. Rather they took it as symptomatic of the masculinisation of the debate that has so far been dominated by Dave, George and Boris. A point proved. As long as only men’s voices were being heard, then women were bound to disengage from the issues. To their cost. “The EU has been vital to securing women’s rights in the workplace,” Eagle pointed out. “It would be complacent to take these rights for granted.”
Things took a more awkward turn when Malhotra, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, got her five minutes at the microphone. Having begun by saying that women had been turned off the debate by both side’s use of Project Fear tactics and that what they really wanted was the facts, she went on to say “a maelstrom of change is buffeting our society: if we leave the EU, the economy will be thrown into recession and 800,000 jobs will be lost”.
As this figure was at the upper limit of Osborne’s Treasury document that had been published the day before, it seemed that Malhotra was being slightly selective with her own facts. Project Fear is not the sole preserve of the patriarchy.
This was not the only slightly uncomfortable moment. No one seemed prepared to engage with the possibility that part of the problem could have been some senior women politicians going awol during the referendum campaign.
Theresa May, usually quite vocal on any contentious issue, appears to have recently taken a vow of silence. “I’m not here to comment on what the Conservative party is doing,” said Harman sharply, having earlier been quite happy to do just that.
The four women also looked a little unhappy when it was pointed out that the referendum would be far less of a male Tory cabal if Labour politicians were to appear to be rather more enthusiastically involved.
While Dave, George and Boris have been out and about every day promising bankruptcy and death to anyone who will listen – and plenty who won’t – Jeremy Corbyn has been largely invisible, having made just three relatively lukewarm speeches in favour of remaining in the EU.
After a long pause to see who was going to pick up the hospital pass, Eagle blinked first. “Jeremy has been very busy leading a united team,” she said. If only he was a woman, he might be able to multi-task. Then he could lead and talk at the same time.
