Caroline Lucas calls for an all-women cabinet

Totally unrelated to the thread ( which I have been following with interest ) I just wanted to comment on a little bit of academic elitism and the sniggering at the mention of Northampton University.
The original Northampton university was the third to open in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge... Some historians think it might even pre-date Cambridge. During a rebellion against the crown, academics from both Oxford and Cambridge were forced to seek shelter and that was provided by Northampton University. The king was persuaded not to execute all the academics since they were the children of wealthy families and thus erode his support and likely foment rebellion. Instead, he took away the town's right to have a university and it was closed. If Northampton had turned away the academics from Oxford and Cambridge, Northampton would likely be the premiere university in the UK and maybe the world. This royal decree was only overturned in 2005... At great cost to the new university !
So maybe a little less sniggering and a little more knowledge about the UK's history ?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northampton_(13th_century)

The wiki isn't totally accurate but gives the gist of the history... And apologies for any derailing.

RLD

Lucas didn't claim that women would provide a "voice of unity", though. Her argument was that "women have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises, are able to reach out to those they disagree with and cooperate to find solutions". Here's the piece she published in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/11/cabinet-women-no-deal-brexit-caroline-lucas

The problem with Tim Reinke-Williams is that he's not interested in considering the argument on its merits. His sole aim is to prove how woke he is by yammering on about how terrible it is to exclude black women, trans women, women who didn't attend a Russell Group university. (There aren't even any trans women in parliament, so how is that going to work?) Perhaps he imagines that he will score some SJW points with his argument. Instead, he just looks like yet another white man telling women how to do feminism.

I don’t think Caroline Lucas is racist at all btw but do find it amusing when someone try’s to play identify politics and then gets outflanked by a SJW.

It’s hilarious that she’s been forced to grovel to the left about not having a brown face (c. 6% of the population) in her dream team whilst her suggestion of a female only take over has been less controversial (excludinf c. 50%).

Well I agreed with the vast majority of what that professor wrote but people are slating him for the cis reference and discounting everything else.

He made a perfectly good point that a bunch of similarly educated white women who all have the same views can not be sanely portrayed as some kind of voice of unity for the people etc. I’m not sure if the mad Caroline even claimed that though as was honest enough about it being an anti brexit initiative. Otherwise Theresa May, Priti Patel, Leadsom etc should have been in the mix.

All this separate people’s assembly stuff is bollocks also as eveyrone wants to ensure this so called thing they want is made up of people who will come up with the answer they want.

The biggest people’s vote was the referendum itself which people are now wanting to ignore. It’s was and still is the largest political vote in the country of all time but some want to replace it with a 100 handpicked people.

Or maybe he’s queer. Yeah, that’ll be it. The ticket for straight white men to continue telling women what to do and think without having to feel bad about it.

Little Timmy doesn’t seem to want to put a profile picture on his Northampton profile. What’s the betting he’s a white male - and thus, by his own lights, duty bound to STFU and cede space in the national media to less dominant groups?

Johnson,who hasn’t the faintest clue how to sort out Brexit

I disagree.

Johnson and his funders know exactly what he's doing. It's just that most people don't believe they will do it.

It'll be funny to look back on this 10 days into crash out brexit, and wonder why more people didn't wake up to what was coming down the line, in the dog days of August.

I say funny....

www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/caroline-lucas-plan-stop-no-deal-brexit-great-greens-least

Everything about that letter enrages me. Obviously the "cisgender" line is particularly fatuous, but the pomposity of lines like "to heal the wounds of this divided kingdom" and the virtue-signalling idiocy of complaining about MPs having attended Russell Group unis - as if getting a degree from a good university is now a bad thing - are surefire signs of someone who has little capacity for critical thinking.

eight studied or taught at Russell Group universities

Head thud.

“University of Northampton”
Snigger

And today's prize for the most idiotic letter in the Guardian goes to Dr Tim Reinke-Williams of the University of Northampton who wrote:

'I vote for the Green party, oppose Brexit, teach and research women’s history, and consider myself to be a feminist, but I do not agree with Caroline Lucas that assembling a cabinet of women is the means by which to solve the problems of Brexit (‘A cabinet of national unity’: Lucas urges female MPs to put aside parties and fight no deal, 12 August).

'We need to encourage cross-party discussion, and the voices of women are underrepresented in the current cabinet, but of the 10 women whom Caroline Lucas approached all are cisgender and white, most are straight, their average age is 50, and eight studied or taught at Russell Group universities. It is debatable whether they represent the diversity of opinions and qualities to be found in Britain and Northern Ireland in the 21st century, and it is unclear why such a homogeneous group will be able to find a solution which will be supported by a majority of MPs and by the general public.

'To heal the wounds of this divided kingdom we need to foster alliances with those most like us, and reach out to those who differ from us. Caroline Lucas seems able to do the former but not the latter.'

Oh, the crime of being all cisgender - or in other words, a group of women consisting entirely of women rather than some of them being men.

How does someone this stupid become an academic? Let alone in women's history - where surely an understanding of the meaning of the word "woman" has to be a given?

I don't think its a bad idea tbh.

From a historical pov, there was no widespread outrage about women being deliberately excluded from positions of power for centuries and even after suffrage was achieved so I have no patience with manufactured claims of sexism and discrimination over this. If a male MP, eg Starmer, had created a fantasy cabinet that didn't include women then the narrative would be they were the best for the job and any dissent would be marginalised, as usual.

Second, the average female MP is definitely better than the average male MP imo. It's easy to give examples of a crap ex-MP or a woman who isn't even an MP at all to try to run them down, but the women on the list (and many not on it) are all more intelligent and focused and have more gumption than the men suggested as alternatives. Going back to Starmer; he's been awful as SSSEEU given the debacle over Labour's actual stance and then there's the Warboys scandal from when he was DPP so I certainly have huge doubts about his competence - and he's being written about on here as someone who'd somehow merit a place on this fantasy cabinet.

Then it goes to GE, pobably after the 'brexit' in early Nov.

Johnson,who hasn’t the faintest clue how to sort out Brexit (and doesn’t have the numbers to prevent no deal even if that is what he wanted) would probably call a GE before the 31st Oct and campaign with the “parliament tried to thwart the will of the people” slogan.

The alternative would be carrying the can for a no deal Brexit after a vote of no confidence, which really isn’t his style.

The Greens are part of the lunatic fringe they care nothing for environmental issues

If nobody can command more support than Johnson, he remains PM
There's a 14 day window to do otherwise.
Then it goes to GE, pobably after the 'brexit' in early Nov.
And on current polling, an extreme right wing executive is put in post, with all the 'emergency' powers available to them.
During the GE campaign, crash out brexit takes place.

What 'proper democratic process' is propelling a crash out brexit?

Unfortunately, the inability of parliament to unite behind another leader.

If nobody can command more support than Johnson, he remains PM.

The Labour Party won’t support a government not headed by Corbyn and no Conservative or DUP member (or independent like Ian Austin) would support Corbyn, so unless that situation changes we are stuck with this government.

She is saying that a working group made up of women free of male macho posturing could put forward a more representative way of moving forward than an unelected PM with a majority of one.

She is specifically talking about a Government with a cabinet, not a working group.

This is the constitutional process by which a crash out brexit is avoided and a confirmatory vote is affirmed in a parliament of our representatives.

It would be if she could show that she had the support of the house, but it’s very clear that she doesn’t.

To stop a no deal Brexit CL would need to co-operate with the people she doesn’t find sympathetic, not the people who she does, and they need to unite behind a particular deal that will be accepted by Europe, not ‘yey, girl power!’.

And thinking about it, the fact that it is CL is probably why i am so annoyed about it. Often voted Green, delighted when she won Parliamentarian of the Year, would have liked 649 MPs like her. If the suggestion had come from someone clearly more on the lunatic fringe, or one of the Guardian's more rabidly-feminist commentators rather than a respected MP, then I probably wouldn't have given it much thought. But the disappointment that someone in whom I believed is happy to go that route...urgh.

What shocks me is not that CL, or any other Remain MP, is exploring methods to find a majority of MPs in an effort to form a government to stop No-Deal Brexit . That is fine.

What shocks me is that she is explicitly calling for a group to be excluded from power based on sex. The argument that "well men do it / have done it" doesn't hold any progressive weight.

"Men do it" - where, in 2019, does a male politician explicitly request an all-male administration, openly stating that he believes that they are better for the task free from 'female hysteria or emotion' ? I refuse to believe MN wouldn't go absolutely bananas (and rightly so), if this were the case. Yes, BJ has Brexit 'war cabinet'. But they were primarily selected for being rabid No-Deal bastards, rather than what's between their legs. And even if they were selected for what is between their legs, he didn't explicitly say it.

As for those who suggest that it can't happen because CL can't get the numbers so it can just be ignored. Imagine, say, UKIP, called for an explicitly white cabinet. Would you be so calm ? Or would you take it as proof they are clearly racist and to be fought against at all costs ? I genuinely am a little panicked, yes, that the idea of governments being picked on the basis of an explicit identitarian ideology, rather than content of character / ideas, is being advanced by someone I had considered a progressive force for good, but who is happy to resort to gender stereotyping in an attempt to snag herself a cabinet post.

Thanks to those posters who have contributed with a deeper analysis on this than 'so sexist!'.

Caroline Lucas isn't suggesting she heads a Government of National Unity

She is saying that a working group made up of women free of male macho posturing could put forward a more representative way of moving forward than an unelected PM with a majority of one.

Even if it backfired on her TM did go to the country and got re-elected - just.

But more than anything what it shows is that MPs themselves are to blame for allowing such a badly thought out referendum to go ahead, and then thought they were entitled to sit around discussing points of protocol as the clock ticked away.

But in the end it will make no difference. Despite the old media making out the social media is corrupting the process, it is them, the old media with their unelected owners and editors who are setting the agenda.

As I said above, if a Labour PM was acting as Johnson is now doing they would have people out on the street.

None of them care about us. They have as little care for us as the makers of tv programmes like Love Island or Jeremy Kyle.

We are just the lab rats they are experimenting on. They'll be sitting round their dinner tables sniggering at us knowing they have havens they can escape to when the UK becomes an island of shortages with nothing to offer but tourism and zero hours work for unskilled labour. With US medical insurance companies running the NHS.

The idea of a cross party group of women MPs trying to sort out the mess that extremist men of all political colours have caused has clearly has triggered quite a few, which has been interesting.

I think you are missing the point.

It would be great if the Tories and Labour could work together to actually sort this mess out- a government of national unity should have occured when May didn't get a majority.

The idea that this would occur because Caroline Lucas suggests it is silly. Linking Brexit to the genuine point that there need to be more women in leadership positions is silly. Nothing about this suggestion is constructive- that's the issue.

I can't imagine many on FWR actually disagree with the general point that politics is poorer when women are not well represented. Thinking this suggestion is silly is not the same as being 'triggered', this is not twitter.