The recent allegations of sexual assault and harassment by high-profile members of Hollywood has been a huge news story, rightly so, although it could lead us to ignore what’s happening in our own country. Commons speaker John Bercow recently publicly stated that the British Parliament and Theresa May needed to do more to handle allegations of sexual harassment. Bercow called for a “zero tolerance” stance within government which would allow employees of MPs specifically, to have more rights.
Bercow’s statement follows reports of an internal Parliament spreadsheet which details the consensual and non-consensual sexual relationships between members of staff. The spreadsheet allegedly only contains the names of Tory MPs who have behaviour in a highly inappropriate manner, however due to the increasing pace of the “Me Too” campaign, other employees from the Labour and Liberal Democratic Party have come forward to oust their abusers. Many are calling for Theresa May to take a hard stance against this, however we can see that this is not only Tory problem but a cross-party problem.
For many years Parliament has tried to shake the shackles of their “boys club” reputation, but has been largely unsuccessful. In recent years the scandalous details of David Cameron’s antics as a young man has not helped the government in appearing more progressive and inclusive. May’s own Defence Secretary Michael Fallon stepped down due to his inappropriate behaviour, no doubt he opted to resign before he was also included in similar lists to the spreadsheet that is circulating. There’s a long history of serious misconduct by MPs towards their employees, for example, Mark Garnier asked his secretary to go and purchase him sex toys.
One would imagine that within government there must be a well organised and concise complaints procedure, however, although some members of government are protected, employees of MPs fall through a loophole in the system. These allegations of sexual harassment are not a secret, there are reports of this information being used by party whips to enforce discipline within their party. This is increasingly worrisome because not only are the attackers not being dealt with, the party can benefit from these allegations by using it for their own means within the party. Theresa may has so far being extremely ineffective with dealing with this issue, some might argue that she has inherited a government with a long tradition of covering up inconvenient truths. In fact, May seems to have skirted round dealing with the issue herself by passing over these allegations to the Cabinet office, maybe her already very fragile government can’t take the strain of allegations against their own members coming out?
Although I would hope that Theresa May would want to take decisive action to bring justice to those victims of sexual assault and harassment, undoubtedly it seems that to stay quite on this issue is of benefit to her. May appears unwilling to rightly name and shame to abusers, as she herself claims to have a secured a close working relationship with President Trump. The many allegations of rape and sexual assault against Trump are common knowledge, and her keen association seems to be too risky to lose by shaming sexual abusers within Parliament and the British government.
Sexual harassment is alive and kicking within British politics, the close relationship Britain has with America, coupled with May’s already fragile standing as PM appears to show May to be unwilling to do the right thing. May refuses to rock the boat within parliament, unfortunately meaning that the long history of harassment within British politics seems doomed to continue.