#ben houchen

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Ben Houchen

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The case of Jessie Joe Jacobs shows we still have a long way to go before we can achieve gender equality in politics

In the autumn of last year, Jessie Joe Jacobs was selected as the Labour candidate for Tees Valley Mayor. If Jessie is a woman and mixed race, if she was elected, she would be the first metro mayor female and first ethnic minority metro mayor in the country. This would be historic, but that obviously does not stop people from taking issue with it. 

Firstly, there are the comments in online newspapers that state that she is being ‘forced’ on the electorate because she is a woman and/or because she is an ethnic minority. There is an assumption at play here which assumes that any candidate who is a woman, an ethnic minority, LGBT+, disabled or falls into any other minority category, must be in favour of ‘identity politics’ and therefore be a triggered snowflake, especially if they are standing for any centrist or left wing party.

Then there are the comments that suggest that the Labour Party is discriminating against men. This is particularly ludicrous in the Tees Valley. There are currently 3 Labour MPs - Alex Cunningham (Stockton North), Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) and Mike Hill (Hartlepool), all men. In December, 3 MPs did lose their seats in the Tees Valley - Jenny Chapman (Darlington), Paul Williams (Stockton South) and Anna Turley (Redcar). Adding all of these up, that’s still 4 men to 2 women, plus a third unsuccessful candidate in Lauren Dingsdale (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) - so still a majority of male candidates in the Tees Valley. 

To add to this, there’s the people who just refuse to see past their own biases even when facts are presented to them. In this case, a man adamant that there is definitely discrimination against men in the way Labour selects its candidates and there was in this case. In reality, there was no All Women Shortlist for the Tees Valley Mayoral election - it would have been illegal to do so. In order to be selected, candidates needed to be nominated by 3 local parties (and in some circumstances, a local party could nominate 2). Those successful candidates would go for shortlisting interviews and then to a membership ballot in the Tees Valley. In this case, there were 3 candidates who put their names forward - Mandy Porter, Dan Smith and Jessie Joe Jacobs. Jessie received nominations from all 7 local parties, Dan received 3 and Mandy was only nominated by her own local party, so was not able to go to the interview stage. The interview panel opted not to shortlist Dan, likely because some Facebook posts from a few years ago surfaced where he accused the Labour Council in Middlesbrough of corruption. Dan was not shortlisted for likely that reason, and certainly not because he’s a man. Despite being told there was no AWS, the response is that there was some sort of ‘subconscious’ All Woman Shortlist and women and minorities only get selected as candidates because the Labour Party are too obsessed with equality and diversity, so therefore it would be very difficult for a woman, half the population, to ever be the best candidate. There is never a question like this when a white man is selected. Nobody ever says “well I think it should be the best person for the job” when a white middle class  man is elected to anything, nobody ever questions whether they got there on merit, but there is always that question when it is a woman or minority. 

Then there are the people who just outright say they don’t want women in elected office. I have my issues with AWS, but to me, it’s undeniable that they were put there with the best of intentions. Women are discriminated against still and this is one method of levelling the playing field, but try telling that to someone who just assumes that a female candidate was selected because of AWS, when they weren’t. 

When there is an assumption that a woman, or an ethnic minority, or someone who is LGBT+ or has a disability has not achieved something on merit, it shows that there really is a long way to go, because it assumes that those people can never be the best person for the job. The default is that the best person is a white middle class man any candidate who doesn’t look like that can’t have been the best person.