Many male MPs and peers will have passed the weekend anxiously reviewing their social media accounts. Older ones may be trying to recall all the lunches with journalists and researchers where they chanced their luck with what was once known in some circles as the 10% rule, the one that says that for every 10 women a man propositions, one will say yes. For generations of women who work in and around Westminster – from MPs to young research assistants – fending off men has been part of the job. Now that a WhatsApp group of women in politics is sharing information about them, the persistence of sexual harassment and worse ought to become clear. At last.
Anyone who still struggles to understand why women’s voices are only now being heard need do no more than parse Michael Gove’s “clumsy” attempt at humour during Saturday morning’s 60th birthday party for the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Mr Gove is not a comedian, but he has a quick mind and is highly articulate, and he has a comic’s knack for taking a complex story and reducing it to its essentials. So it stretches credibility to believe, as he would like, that he suddenly blurted out a joke comparing John Humphrys’ interviewing technique to Harvey Weinstein’s abusive and predatory exploitation of women. Did he really just drop his guard? It didn’t sound like that. It sounded as if he thought it was funny. His fellow guest, the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, thought it was funny. John Humphrys thought it was funny. Even the sedate and highbrow Wigmore Hall, hosting the live broadcast, rang with audience laughter. It felt like yet more proof that many men still don’t grasp what women face, or how damaging it can be.
Later, he apologised. Courtesy is another Govean hallmark. But this is a joke straight out of that compendium of bad taste jests, the Westminster playbook. It is the kind of joke that relies on complicity, in this case with a worldview that draws no distinction apparently between allegations of rape and a BBC radio interviewer’s technique. Move along, ladies, nothing to fuss about.
Westminster, by most accounts, is a much less nasty place to work for women now that there are so many more female MPs and staff. Yet it remains, like most other workplaces, dominated by men with a sense of entitlement. It is also a world of multiple bars, where people often have to work intensely hard and late into the night. It is sometimes described as a village, and for all the political differences, the whiff of cultural uniformity lingers.
Part of this culture, again true of all parties, is that the whips know everything that might be used against every one of their MPs. Downing Street is silent on the suggestion that the prime minister is kept informed of every allegation or suspicion about any wrongdoing connected with any Conservative MP, but it has certainly been true of some of her predecessors. That is why the rumours now circulating about some members of her cabinet are potentially so damaging for her, as well as for the men concerned. There is a risk that Theresa May will appear to be complicit. That is why there is to be a cabinet office investigation into the international development minister Mark Garnier’s Soho shopping trip, and why Mrs May has written to the Speaker proposing a wider commission of inquiry. Jeremy Corbyn also understands that when he demands that these allegations be taken seriously.
Over the next few days stories seem likely to emerge that will test the meaning of sexual harassment in a much more nuanced way than the crassness of Michael Gove’s joke. It is an important moment. MPs seethe with frustration at the lack of political business in a Commons bogged down by Brexit. But here is a moment where they could have a lasting influence on the national conversation. That does not mean letting this open another front in the culture wars. It’s about putting respect at the centre of human relations.
