Power, and why sexual relationships in politics are so problematic
Westminster is full of MPs sleeping with their researchers. And those who aren’t doing it are joking about doing it. Jokes are part of every workplace culture, but this culture signals to young women exactly their status in the ecosystem. It signals similarly to young men. Gay men, or those who seem particularly vulnerable to male-on-male harassment, experience significant unwanted attention in parliament. Young queer people are, as ever, objects of fascination.
This month, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution banning congressmen from having sexual relationships with their employees. In Australia, a similar measure has been imposed in the wake of a scandal involving the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, after a tabloid newspaper published pictures of his pregnant mistress – an employee of his when their affair began. (He also has a very publicly angry wife.) While admitting he is “not any form of saint”, Joyce has argued that his love life is a private matter. Many sympathise.
The #BonkBan has been a gift to Aussie comics and Twitter wags. On the other side of the globe, the prospect has caused sleepless nights for many a man in Westminster. But do amorous MPs really need to be kept on a leash? We all know of happy relationships that started in the workplace. Many of us have celebrated the multi-decade anniversaries of friends, discreetly forgetting that one started as the other’s supervisor. The #MeToo movement will only have a lasting impact if it generates a conversation of genuine nuance about sexual grey areas. Feminists will do ourselves a disservice if we don’t allow people to be human.
Joyce’s demand for privacy deserves a humane debate in Britain too. Most MPs have families already raw from life in the public eye. During recent inquiries into accusations of sexual harassment against MPs, a number of newspapers struggled with whether or not to publish stories of ministers’ consensual affairs with nonetheless vulnerable employees. Where a former employee considered herself consenting and wanted privacy, the answer was “no” – and understandably so. When I made an accusation of inappropriate behaviour against the cabinet minister Damian Green, one of the things I tried hardest to do – and deeply regret failing at – was to protect other women from press pursuit when they had not invited it.
Yet we need to hold our MPs to account. There is something uniquely problematic about sex in parliament. The average backbencher may look like Alan Partridge to you, but they still wield hard power over people’s lives. MPs operate small offices, with three or four staff who are dependent on references (particularly if they have political aspirations themselves). Even if a sexual relationship is impeccably respectful and egalitarian, it’s hard to imagine it not generating preferential treatment or discriminating against those who aren’t in bed with the boss. (It is similarly unhealthy that so many MPs employ their close relatives.) In other large organisations, employees may move teams once they declare a personal relationship – in a Commons built on 650 independent small businesses, that isn’t possible.
The report on sexual harassment by the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, published this month, doesn’t propose a ban on relationships between MPs and staff. But it is a promising blueprint for professionalising the entire outfit. As the members of her cross-party working group grasp, there’s something about working in an ancient, storied building that makes MPs feel like gods. (Oxbridge dons aren’t always that different.) Sit on the benches where Gladstone and Disraeli sat before you, and one can feel like a member of a mystic elect, not an employer with HR obligations ‘It is disappointing that some of those pushing for greater representation have avoided engaging with the sexual harassment scandal.’ Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty
A continued drive for more family-friendly hours and more women in parliament will do as much to drag Westminster into the 21st century as anything in Leadsom’s report. It is disappointing that some of those involved in pushing for greater representation have avoided engaging with the sexual harassment scandal. Well-intentioned hashtags, such as #AskHerToStand, won’t attract more women until we make parliament a more welcoming place.
The Tory MP Roger Gale, who thinks women who complain about sexual harassment are “wilting flowers”, has used the new willingness to report abuse as a reason to warn his son against following in his father’s footsteps. There is grumbling about mandatory sexual harassment training. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Roger turns up.) Yet, as Leadsom’s report notes, the problem in parliament is not that most MPs are monsters, but that they exist within a culture that doesn’t teach them normal professional boundaries. Nudging MPs into basic self-awareness can only help them avoid trouble.
At the heart of the #MeToo movement is a global demand by women to shift the balance of anxiety in the workplace. When I made my complaint against Green, I faced a barrage of scrutiny as to how I might have invited his behaviour. What did I wear to work? Did I sign off text messages with an “x”? If male MPs are worrying for the first time about their jokes being misinterpreted, it is but a taste of the paranoia with which working women have long policed ourselves.
Globally, nothing has fuelled the backlash against #MeToo like the fear that feminists are conspiring to abolish due process. Donald Trump, who seems to take every complaint about gendered violence as a personal criticism, tweeted last week about the loss of “due process” after the resignation of Rob Porter, a staffer whom the FBI said in a report given to the White House faced multiple, police-backed accusations of domestic violence. (Porter denies the allegations.)
What men like Trump don’t get is that the new feminism is demanding justice in the workplace for the first time. Most of us who have made allegations in public – including mine against Green – have done so only after trying and failing to find a confidential process. The #MeToo campaign should embrace the move to institutionalise fair grievance procedures at the heart of power. It won’t solve all our problems – it won’t change the fact that power is usually exploited in messy, hard-to-define situations. But the modernisation of archaic workplaces such as parliament shows that a women’s revolt can be rational and scientific. Let’s leave the hysteria to Gale and Trump.
We’re not banning workplace relationships or bad jokes. But we’d like our MPs to grow up. The conservative philosopher Richard Weaver wrote that ideas have consequences. So too does behaviour.
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