The history of Parliament Square’s Millicent Fawcett statue is a long, women-driven one:
- In 2016, feminist journalist Caroline Perez launched a campaign to install a female statue in Parliament Square after noticing the lack of female representation amongst the plinths.
- The Fawcett Society latched onto the campaign and in May an open letter signed by 42 prominent women was sent to the mayor’s office requesting a suffragette statue be erected in the square by 2018.
- Sadiq Khan agreed to the need for said statue, though wouldn’t commit to it being in Parliament Square.
- In the end a petition got 78,000 signatures and Westminster Council granted a planning application.
- Then-communities secretary Sajid Javid, and PM Theresa May, supported the campaign.
This potted history was too complex for Sadiq Khan’s Twitter feed…
A self-promoting Khan celebrated International Women’s Day this morning by boasting about all the wonderful things he has done for London’s women – including presiding over the Millicent Fawcett statue:
7/10 women Deputy Mayors. First woman Commissioners of the Met & LFB. First statue of a woman in Parliament Square. Record investment to tackle violence against women & girls. Called for misogyny to be a hate crime.
— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) March 8, 2021
Today & every day - I'm a proud feminist in City Hall. #IWD2021 pic.twitter.com/9j50owbBdd
It all reminded Guido of the classic Onion article, “Man Finally Put In Charge of Struggling Feminist Movement”. Women hold up half the sky, though Sadiq does most of the heavy lifting…
On today’s International Women’s Day, Guido thought it was time to celebrate the first female leaders of significant political parties in the UK. The timeline of trailblazers is:
- Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, 1975
- Green Party, Jean Lambert, 1992
- Welsh Nationalists, Leanne Wood, 2012
- Scottish Nationalists, Nicola Sturgeon, 2014
- Democratic Unionist Party, Arlene Foster, 2015
- UKIP, Diane James, 2016
- Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, 2019
- [Labour Party, NA, NA]
Unless Sir Keir has a big announcement to make, sadly the Labour Party can’t yet properly participate in this list…
Guido has crunched the numbers for International Women’s Day, looking at the historic dataset for British Prime Minister’s stretching back to Walpole. Despite the brocialists claims to be the party to advance the status of women, they have never in all their history elected a woman leader, in fact in every Labour Party leadership election women candidates have always got the least votes from the brocialist membership. In every single Labour leadership election, ever.
Nor have the Liberal Democrats or their Liberal Party predecessor’s had a women leader. It is quite something to think that every woman Tory leader has become PM and every woman Labour leadership candidate has got the least votes from the Labour Party membership. Happy International Women’s Day!
On International Women’s Day, I am proud to serve as Britain’s second female Prime Minister alongside so many other women in vital public positions #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/jfmZ2fo1xV
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) 8 March 2018
Maybe one day a woman will be elected leader of the Labour Party…
25 minutes after Jezza was accused by Theresa May of “mansplaining” International Women’s Day at PMQs, the Leader’s Office fired off this invitation to a hastily-organised reception to recognise the occasion. With the event scrabbled together at the last minute, guests were given just four hours to RSVP and were expected to cancel their plans and make it to Westminster that same evening. Fair to say it went down pretty badly – here is anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali:
What an absolute Joke!! Either I have just been added to their list after tweeting about how shit they are on #FGM or they are literally putting together an event for #internationalwomensday2018 at the 11th hour. pic.twitter.com/IyrK33JOm8
— Nimco Ali 🔻 (@NimkoAli) March 7, 2018
In the end only a small group of largely Westminster based staff made it to the reception to hear Jezza. Surely the brocialists didn’t forget?
In a Mumsnet exclusive report Downing Street brief that the Budget – which this year falls on International Women’s Day – will include a new £5 million fund to extend a return-to-work scheme. Before Philip Davies loses it – the scheme is open to men as well…
It is a move that will be welcomed by none of the 600,000 babies born last year. The spend works out as equivalent to £5 per head for return-to-workers. More than enough to pay the return-to-worker’s bus fare back to work. For one day…
