You know us girls and our love of pink, amiright? Labour's new 'woman to woman' campaign, that sees Harriet Harman trotting around the UK in an attempt to get women who didn't vote in 2010 to vote this time, has been called out on it's pretty unimaginative use of a pink minibus. Because hey! Girls like pink! Just like when every time David Cameron travels around speaking to men, he drives a powder blue car. A boy car.
To be fair, Harriet's response was pretty funny. 'We wanted it to be red…', she said at a media briefing, pointing to a Labour backdrop, '…but then it looked the same as everything else. We then looked at a darker red, but that looked too much like a Pret delivery van. We wanted to be visible and conspicuous, to mark it out, to be different... ' before joking, 'Is it not magenta or something? It is a very nice looking bus.... It is the correct colour. This is a One Nation Labour colour.'
Whatever Labour had done, they would have got a bit of stick. Red, for example, looks like a period bus. Yellow and blue and green are out, as is purple, thanks to the other main parties - and painting it brown would have conjured images of, y'know, tree branches.
Obviously, Lib Dems and Conservatives have jumped on the criticism, in the hope that it'll make Labour lose the election. 'Getting Harriet Harman to drive around the country in a pink van to try and attract the female vote is as patronising as it gets,' said backbench MP Caroline Dinenage, 'This is clearly just another divisive gimmick that the electorate will see through'.
To be completely honest, we're a bit more interested in what the campaign entails, rather than the colour of the bus. Because isn't that what actually matters? For anyone interested in how the campaign will affect the way they live, here are the main points to take away:
If Labour get a majority, that'll mean a parliamentary labour party of 43% women, with a view to nail the 50:50 ratio while they're in power. The prospective parliamentary candidates (as in, the hopefuls trying to bag a seat) are 53% female. In comparison to just 23% of current Conservative females in parliament, and the Lib Dem target of getting 31% female seats, this is pretty impressive. Basically, Labour puts the other two to shame in terms of gender representation.
The campaign also aims to remind women about Labour's strong track record in terms of 'childcare, family care, equal pay and tackling domestic violence', as well as highlighting how difficult the Tories have made it for women - with tax changes and the ever widening pay gap.
'We believe that this election will be a watershed for women in this country. Women had been making progress in their lives with the backing of the last Labour Government. But now, with this Tory-led government that progress is stalling and the clock is being turned back on equality,' Harriet Harman says. 'With ‘Woman to Woman’ we will be discussing with women what they want from government. The campaign will bring politics to the school gate and the shopping centre as well as colleges, offices and factories.'
Oh yeah but guys, the bus is pink so let's just ignore all that shall we? Sigh.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.