Imagine a world where everyone in politics suddenly started asking What Men Want. Imagine senior male politicians promising earnestly to ensure men are taken seriously; pollsters churning out cute blue graphs analysing the ‘men’s vote’. Except that would never happen, because the ‘men’s vote’ isn’t a thing. Men are treated as individuals, not lumped together by gender – which might have something to do with so many politicians themselves being male.
That’s why talk of courting the ‘women’s vote’ can feel patronising. But the trashing of Labour’s ‘pink bus’ campaign last week – involving Shadow Leader Harriet Harman and Shadow Women’s Minister Gloria De Piero touring the country in a minibus, trying to convince women that politics isn’t just run by and for men; that what we think counts – is a classic case of not seeing the wood for the trees. When exactly the same shade was used as a backdrop to Ed Miliband’s party conference speech, nobody blinked. But put a woman, not a man, in front of it and – whoa! – overnight, shocking pink becomes Barbie pink: silly, girly, sugary.
Is it really the paint job that’s the problem? Or could it be that the idea of women doing something for other women is all too often trivialised and ridiculed, especially by the kind of men who love cutting powerful women down to size?
It’s true we shouldn’t need a special ‘lady campaign’. Women’s interests mostly aren’t miles away from men’s, and where they are – say, over the pay gap – the mainstream campaign should damn well be discussing them; we’re half the population, not some niche interest. But the sneering backlash against the pink bus is, in a way, proof of why it’s needed. The fi rst ever stand-alone Labour women’s campaign didn’t come from nowhere.
It came, not from a desire to patronise, but from years of women in all parties being patronised, paraded like trophy wives during election campaigns but excluded from big decisions. It came from years of watching stuff that interests women slip through the cracks of male-run campaigns; years of watching women lose faith in politics until, by the last election, 9.1 million didn’t vote. If the pink bus changes even a handful of minds, its critics may yet end up with very red faces.