Webchat with Labour leadership contender Emily Thornberry MP on Wednesday February 5 at 12.30pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Labour leadership contender Emily Thornberry MP on Wednesday 5 February at 12.30pm.

Emily Thornberry is Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, having been first elected in 2005; before that she was a barrister specialising in human rights law. She has served in Labour shadow cabinets in roles from the environment and defence to Shadow Attorney General, and is currently Shadow Foreign Secretary, in which role she has opposed Saudi Arabian-led interventions in Yemen and condemned the US’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani, highlighting its potential to inflame tensions in the region.

In 2014 she resigned from the shadow cabinet following a kerfuffle about a tweet featuring a photo of a voter’s house festooned with England flags. Emily has run campaigns on affordable housing, proposed ‘radical legislation’ to close the gender pay gap, and is believed to have argued for Labour to change its Brexit policy and support a second referendum.

Please do join the chat on Wednesday at 12.30pm or if you can’t make it, leave a question here in advance.

We've invited and are hoping to have the final two contenders on over the next few weeks; if you missed our previous webchats with Jess Phillips MP and Sir Keir Starmer MP, click on the links to catch up.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

What do you think of universal basic income models?

@Lordfrontpaw

Thanks for agreeing to take part.

It was reported in the newspaper that you said that having a woman at the top of the party would be an "advantage" in the contest because Boris Johnson has a "woman problem" and that you would "frighten the life out of" him at future Prime Minister's Questions.

If you were to be chosen leader, how will to ensure that women's human rights are protected?

Well the first thing I’d do is what I’ve done as Shadow Foreign Secretary, and highlight the fact that women’s human and reproductive rights are under assault around the world right now, an attack being led by Donald Trump, both in his own country and abroad. Can you believe that his administration said they would veto a UN resolution against the use of rape as a weapon of war unless the clause referring to women’s reproductive rights was removed, and the rest of the UN – including our own government – caved, and agreed to take out that clause? It’s despicable.

And domestically, I’d be focused not just on the issues that are obviously about women’s rights – gender pay inequality, sexual harassment, the WASPI women, domestic violence and refuges, the abysmal percentage of rape charges that result in successful prosecutions, and so on – but also the issues that the media don’t regard as gender issues, but which actually are. For example, the drastic under-funding of social care, which disproportionately affects women at every level, as unpaid carers, professional carers, or those being looked after. But you can add to that safety issues like cuts in street-lighting, community policing, and the attempted removal of train guards, plus the cuts in youth services and after-school activities, which leave too many mums having to work short hours to go and take care of their kids.

@VortexofBloggery

Hi Emily

If you win (and I hope you do) what is the first thing you'll DO as Leader of the Labour Party which will signal a major departure from the agenda of the previous leadership? Deeds not words. Thanks.

The first thing I would do would be to appoint a shadow cabinet and the people around the table would be our best and most talented people. They will come from all over the country, be equal numbers men and women, all wings of the party and look like the country that we hope to serve. I am not sectarian and never have been. I come from the heart of the Labour party we need the best people to be the best opposition we can be and gain the trust of the public.

Hi Emily,

Mumsnet has been running a campaign to get employers to publish their parental leave policies, so that people planning families don't have to guess what pay and leave they'll be allowed if they take maternity, paternity or other parental leave. Our users have told us they don't like to ask this question during the recruitment process because they fear it would make a job offer less likely.

We think publishing this policies is a really easy, cost-free thing for businesses to do, and could drive a race to the top for those employers who really value committed parents on staff.

Do you agree with us it should be compulsory for big employers, as with gender pay gap reporting?

Keir Starmer has already supported it, will you?

@hamstersarse

What do you think of universal basic income models?

Thanks for all the great questions hamsterarse but afraid we do have a one question poster rule so we'll probably just get to your first one.

@BullshitVivienne

Imagine you get a chance to do the last election again. What do you do differently, and what wouldn't you change?

I wouldn't have had an election in those circumstances. Our policy was to put any deal to another referendum to have confirmed by the public whether they wanted to leave under the circumstances of that deal. It was the biggest decision we had to make as country for 50 years and it seemed to me that that was the way to sort out Brexit. It was a monumental mistake to walk into a General Election of a type of the Tories' choosing, it was a one issue election. The Tories had 'Get Brexit done' and our policy was three and a half paragraphs - and we hoped to change the subject. We weren't able to. I'm afraid I said so at the time, I raised it clearly and loudly at shadow cabinet. I tried to have a meeting with Jeremy about the issue but in the end I had to write a clear letter to his office and I'm afraid it now reads like a far too accurate prediction of what was going to happen. What we need to do is have a GE not fundamentally changing who we are, and actually I can't see anything in the manifesto with which I disagree, but there was just far too much in it. We need to be much clearer about our priorities, I don't want us to go back to the 1990s apart from winning elections. And remember in the 1990s we used to have pledge cards with our 5 main pledges on it. We need to have that discipline.

I think we need to make the Labour HQ and regions much more professional, we cannot be cuddly hopeless lefties. We can be cuddly and lefty but not hopeless. We are not a protest movement, we were created by working people to be a party of power to make the lives of working people better. We cannot do that without being in power. We must be focused, single-minded and ruthless about ensuring that we win elections, and quite frankly, many decisions that were made in the GE were not based on sufficient evidence and not done in a sufficiently professional way. Our hundreds of thousands of volunteers, our candidates, our MPs but most importantly our country were let down by this. Under my leadership that will never happen again.

@GeordieTerf

Hi Emily,

Thanks for coming on.

I'm a working-class Northern woman. However, like many others, I couldn't bring myself to vote for Labour in the December elections. This was because of the party's sexism, anti-semitism, classism, and tribalism.

To illustrate my points, Labour talks about working class Northeners like we are some kind of pathetic charity case. For example, many of the Labour MPs in this area are still talking about the mines. They don't get that most people have moved on. We want to hear about the future, not the past. We don't want more benefits, we want more jobs.

How will you encourage people like me to rejoin and vote for your party?

Thank you.

My basic answer is we can’t have our election policies being drawn up in a backroom in Westminster. We need our next manifesto to be drawn up by the Labour MPs, candidates and campaigners in the North and the Midlands, Wales and Scotland – the seats where the next election will be won and lost – telling us what policies will make a genuine difference in their areas, not just in terms of jobs as you say, but also investment, housing, transport, and tax breaks for high streets that have been hollowing out. But equally, they can’t be making up those policies in their own backrooms. They need to be on the doorstep talking to voters like you, and asking what you want.

Do you think Momentum are partly to blame for the loss of the election?

@GinUnicorn

Hi Emily,

What would you do about the shocking state of postnatal care. Many women are left without food, water and pain medications and wards are overcrowded with partners staying all night (due to the inadequate care) which leaves many women feeling uncomfortable when at their most vulnerable.

I can’t help but feel that if men gave birth postnatal would be improved dramatically. What are you thoughts and how would you improve things to give women dignity and care during childbirth and recovery.

This is definitely accords with my memory of having children. We shouldn't be in a position where the state of postnatal care is so inadequate that women's partners have to, and want to, do many jobs themselves. But we have to be careful about how it infringes on the privacy and dignity that women on overcrowded wards are entitled to expect. Something which comes as a great shock to many women when they have their first child is dealing with how messy you are afterwards and they have no idea about the size of the pads you need - its simple as that. In my experience, not many hospitals provide them and that can be really humiliating. The answer to all of this is more funding so that we can assure better postnatal care, reduce the demand on partners and ensure NHS staff have the time and energy to make sure every patient's privacy is properly protected at all times. But also we need to assure that there is adequate support for women breastfeeding for the first time.

But let's not stop at postnatal care. I'd also be committed to improving prenatal care, ending the IVF lottery where the chances of assistance varies so wildly depending on where you live and ending the shocking lack of care and support for women after they've had miscarriages.

I've heard you've got a filthy laugh Has it ever got you into trouble?

I think you are my favourite so far Emily.

I really appreciate your clear and excellent answer on women's maternity care.

@TresDesolee

Hello Emily. I’m a remain voter and ex-Labour voter who’s really disappointed in how the Labour Party has performed on this issue, from Corbyn being AWOL during the referendum campaign, to the party appearing to be reluctant to pick a side between 2016 and 2019.

But most of all it felt as though just when the country needed Labour to provide an effective, realistic, attractive alternative government, you chose instead to be a self-immolating extremist sect with an unelectable candidate for prime minister.

I’m not saying Labour is solely responsible for Brexit and the damage it will do, but I think you bear a lot of responsibility. Do you agree Labour was off the pitch just when we needed you to be at the top of your game?

(I appreciate that you personally were on the Remain side of the argument, but as a potential leader I’d like to know what you think about the wider question of whether Labour let the country down.)

I hear what you’re saying, I really do. I fought as hard as I could during the referendum campaign – I’d do big events up and down the country alongside my fellow Labour MPs, but we’d end up getting five seconds on the news, because they were all more obsessed with the internal Tory psycho-drama of Cameron v Johnson and Osborne v Gove.

But I accept we didn’t do enough then to make a positive case for remaining in the EU and the benefits that would bring, rather than giving out all these warnings about the damage it would do if we left. That was the official Remain campaign strategy but it was a major mistake – you’ve always got to give people something positive to vote for, not just a set of warnings.

As for what’s happened since 2016, I agree with you again. We tried sitting on the fence or straddling both sides of the argument, and that worked to some extent in the 2017 election, but it was never going to work in December. You can’t allow a single-issue election, then refuse to take a clear position on that issue. To mix my metaphors, then you go from sitting on the fence to standing in the middle of a car-crusher, being squeezed by both sides. It was a terrible mistake, not one I supported, and not one I would have made.

@hamstersarse

What real life experience do you have which makes you sure you are up to the job?

When I was a child who lived on top of the hill in Guildford, my father walked out when I was 7 and we were left penniless. The bailiffs used to come around and we used to hide. Eventually they caught us and we were thrown out. A Labour councillor saved us and found us somewhere to live, sorted out the benefits that my mother needed. She had 3 children under 7. I was brought up on a big council estate by a single parent. We had free school dinners, I failed my 11 plus, I went to a school where expectations of me were very low. A career adviser once told me when I asked for advice that I could always visit people in prison. I worked my way through college, did a huge number of jobs from working in factories, cleaning out the toilets in Townsend Thoresen ferries, selling ice creams on Evita, working in pubs and care homes, selling Avon. I first joined the National Union of Seamen when I worked on Townsends. I became a barrister where my pivotal experience was representing miners during the strike, who were in danger of being criminalised for being involved in the strike. Only at that stage did I come to really realise what solidarity meant. I joined the union that was to become Unite that same year. I went on to be a successful barrister but I have a wide range of experience of life, of struggle and poverty and I have been lucky and I have done well.

I think that my life experience gives me insight into people's lives, struggle is struggle and poverty is poverty where ever you go. I believe that only the Labour party is the vehicle that can make the lives of working people better. I believe this strongly from my own experience of life. I think the struggles I've had have made me tough but also empathetic. I am who I am because of my experience.

@icechips

Hello. Do you think it's important for a Labour leader to be patriotic? What does 'patriotism' mean to you?

My politics come from a deep love of my country, that a belief that Britain can do so much better. That its people have so much more potential and that our current system is not the British way. I will always do everything I can do protect our country and give proper recognition to those people in frontline services and military services who are prepared to put their lives on the line for our country.

@DeRigueurMortis

Hi Emily,

Do you think the Labour Party's election manifesto was overloaded and what policies would you, if elected leader choose not to retain (by way of example but not confined to; free WiFi, nationalisation, waspie payouts, NHS investment).

Question Context:

Many people (including myself) liked many of the proposed policies but were highly skeptical that these could all be implemented whilst maintaining appropriate fiscal prudence and containing tax increases to the most well off members of society - thus undermining belief in both the Party and the manifesto as a whole.

I can't say at this stage what will be in the next manifesto as unfortunately it is 5 years off. We don't know what the state of Britain will be or what the state of our economy will be post-Brexit.
But to be helpful, if there was to be election now my priorities would be these:

1. At long last addressing the scandal of the under funding of social care and make sure it works closely with the National Health Service. We can no longer have a time where elderly women are put to bed at 5 in the evening because there is no one to look after them or where people with disabilities are not washed everyday. This must stop. People go in to the NHS in crisis because they haven't been looked after properly and they cant get out again because there is no one to look after them. I don't think this is the British way.

1. We need to look at a radical change to our economy. We must have a proactive regional industrial strategy where the government gives assistance to ensure that areas that have been stripped of jobs have life breathed back into them again. That, of course, links in to the green industrial revolution and ensure that post-industrial areas become industrial areas again. Areas appropriate for the 21st century.

3 would be education, education, education.

4 would be being able to hold our heads up high on the international stage and looking at all these so called 'big men' that are leading countries around the world who think that it is OK to walk all over international law, international institutions and the rules based order. We need to link up with other countries who think the same as we do and have our voice amplified. Whether that's Jacinda Ardern, whether that's Angela Merkel, whether that's Sahle-Work Zewde, whether that's Katrin Jakobsdottir.

1. We must have an adequate safety net. At the moment we have the disgrace of entire families falling through and ending up at food banks or people sleeping on the streets.

Labour lost significantly in the North East and Midlands. These were Leave voting constituencies. How do you plan to win those voters back?

Hi, Emily.

How do you see Labour positioning themselves in the new landscape of Neoliberalism and post-left and right politics? The Unions are increasingly irrelevant - how will Labour work in a globalised world with an ever-increasing gap in income?

I also want to ask about policy on climate change, which is becoming increasingly more urgent.

And women's rights, especially pertaining to our freedom of speech to name, discuss and fight for our sex based rights.

But I think I'm only allowed one questions, so the first one would be great to hear an answer to, thank you.

@Byebyebicycle

Hi Emily, You've spoken about the Uyghur detention camps in China andcalled out the British government on twitter for staying quiet over what's happening in Hong Kong. If you were to become leader of the Labour party, what actions will you be taking on these issues? I split my time between UK/East Asia and many close friends of mine have been really affected by these issues. I'm really tired of hearing sound bites with no proposed solutions

Whether it’s the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims, Chinese Christians, or Hong Kong democracy protesters, we cannot stay silent on Chinese human rights abuses in the way the Tory government is doing. But you’re right, we also need action, and while there’s only so much we can actually do given the fierce Chinese resistance to interference in their internal affairs, one thing I’d say is this: I’m a student of UN politics, and I remember back during the horrific times of the Darfur massacres, how nobody believed action could be taken against the Sudanese government because China would veto it because of its trade links with Sudan. But when put to the test, China didn’t veto the action because it didn’t want to look bad on an issue creating such a global outcry, so I think sometimes we need to be more willing to put China to the test, via the UN.

@eggsandham

Hi Emily. Thanks for coming onto Mumsnet. I am a Labour Party member and currently a floating voter. I was quite concerned to see Rebecca Long Bailey's abortion comments. When Keir came on Mumsnet earlier in the week he was unequivocal in his support for a woman's right to choose and said he'd go further and change the law to protect those suffering intimidation at abortion clinics. Can you tell us where you stand on a woman's right to choose? Are you as unequivocal as Keir on this issue?

Generations of women in our country have fought incredibly hard for the abortion rights we now have and I have always fought to defend those rights. One of the first demonstrations I ever went on was in the late 1970s against the Corrie Bill, and I also fought in Parliament as the unofficial chief whip to ensure that there was no slipping back on the rights of women in 2009. There must be no rowing back from those rights. And I've also fought to ensure that women exercising those rights are not intimidated outside of abortion clinics.

If I'm honest, one of the most bitter and upsetting memories in my time in politics, back before any of the other 3 candidates were even in Parliament, I was ordered by Gordon Brown to withdraw an amendment I'd put down which would have forced Northern Ireland to allow full abortion rights long before now. We had the numbers and we could have got it through. I vowed to myself then and I vow it again, that if I'm ever in the leadership that Gordon was in then, I would always be pushing to protect women's rights to choose and never allowing those rights to be eroded.

@Macbooksdontwork

Hi Emily,

Why on earth did Labour give Johnson the early election he craved - what was the plan?

God knows. I couldn’t agree with you more. When the idea of an early election on the single issue of Brexit was floated, I went into Shadow Cabinet and wrote a formal memo to Jeremy Corbyn’s office arguing that we would be stark staring bonkers to give Johnson what he wanted, instead of demanding a second referendum on that single issue, and once that was resolved, then arguing for a general election where all the issues could have been discussed. All my advice was ignored and look where we are now. So if there was a plan, I don’t know what it was, but it was never going to work.

@bellinisurge

Hello Emily. Don't you think your tweet about White Van man demonstrates everything people have disliked about "out of touch" politicians. When I first read the story, I thought it was done by some snooty Tory. But it was you. How do you defend ongoing reference to it? Like I've just done there.

Several years ago I was involved with the Rochester by-election and I took a number of photographs. Some of dogs with rosettes, some of the Monster Raving Loony party, some of handmade posters, clouds forming behind Rochester castle and a house that was covered in so many England flags that a man couldn't see out the window. It was a very striking image and it had been several months since the World Cup. I posted all these photographs and went to a parent's evening and when I came out my phone literally exploded. I was asked by Ed Miliband to stand down and not say anything. Looking back on it, I shouldn't have done that. I should've explained at the time rather than allow other people to interpret the photograph in their way rather than mine. I think when people know about me properly and they know that I come from a council estate, that my sister is a bus driver, my brother, until he got his injury, was a builder and drove a red van, I think they would appreciate that out of all the things that are said about me the thing that upsets me the most is the idea that I would look down on people. If we put it in context, we have a prime minister in this country who has said about blue-collar workers, like my brother, that they are lazy, usually unemployed, drunk and with low self-esteem. Exactly who is being snooty here?

Hi Emily,

You are my favorite so far by a mile and I will be trying my hardest to get you nominated in my CLP (Sheffield Central).

What are your views on open selection within the party? And how can we further democratise the party?

Thank you for your time

@NeurotrashWarrior

Hello Emily,

If you became leader do you think you would continue all women short lists?

What would be your reasons for either continuing or discontinuing them?

Why are they still needed in 2020?

During the last 20 or so years the Labour party has been completely transformed and feminised. We've had a massive increase in women members, councillors and MPs. We've had a really important debate in the LP when it comes to all women shortlists where people were challenged by the issue and we had arguments about why we had all men shortlists before. What is the added value of having a woman candidate as opposed to a man? What do they bring and why are they needed. It's largely won but not completely.

For example, it has been said that what Labour needs is a leader who will look like a Prime Minister. We have a bit of a problem in the Labour Party in that we have never had a woman Prime Minister before and people need to think about that. We did have in 2001, the first time we didn't have all women shortlists, we had a big backlash and very few women were selected at that point. So while I hope that at one stage soon we wont need all women shortlists I can't be confident that we are at that stage yet.

@Winecheesesleep

Hi Emily, I'm a Labour Party member who has recently rejoined. I quit the party over the poor response to anti-semitism and am hoping this will be strongly tackled by the next leader but I think you've already been asked about that.

So my question is - what positive and optimistic policies would you pursue to get people excited as opposed to "anti" policies ie anti-austerity, anti-Tory. It's not that I don't agree with those but it doesn't seem as though they connect for a lot of people

You're right. What we need to do as a party is we need to be optimistic. We need to show that there is another way and it doesn't have to be like this. And our challenge is to get the confidence of people that we can provide that change. If they don't believe we can do it they won't trust us and they won't vote for us.