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4 hours ago
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Politics has a problem with sexism and misogyny. We need to be clear what it is and why. With every scandal there is a call to clean up the system, to reform vetting procedures and the laws governing the release of sensitive information. Those are serious issues, but we will not fix the problem by starting there because the problem is not procedural. It is about culture and behaviour.
In the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s appointment to be the British ambassador to the United States, of course we need to establish the timeline of who said what, to whom and when. Gordon Brown is right to insist on a more rigorous process and a renewed commitment to the redistribution of power. But if we focus solely on what happened we will miss the important question of why it happened.
This is more than a story about the flaws of individuals and the flaws of a system. This is about culture and moral character. About how, for too long, proximity to power insulated powerful, wealthy and well-connected men from the consequences of their appalling behaviour towards women and girls. The really worrying aspect is not what took place in secret. It is what happened in plain sight. A candidate’s known association with a convicted sexual predator did not weigh heavily enough on decision-makers. And we need to think too about the silence of those who stood by, who knew enough to feel uneasy and yet did not speak loudly enough to influence the decision.
This is a group I include myself in. Contrary to what has been widely reported, I was not a close friend of Peter Mandelson, but I am not going to wash my hands of my actual association with him either. After a weekend of smear and innuendo that I have something to hide, I have decided to publish my messages with Mandelson. From these messages, people will see that the main issue I have had with their publication is that I will put some of my colleagues in a difficult position because of what I said about the Israeli government ahead of the recognition of the state of Palestine. Mandelson and I saw each other for dinner on average once a year, in a group setting. He offered advice. My partner worked for him 25 years ago and I therefore got to know him better than others of that generation in politics, a generation I have always admired since I joined the Labour party as a 15-year-old in 1998. I wasn’t involved in his appointment, but like many other people I thought it was a good move at the time. The painful truth I have spent the past few days wrestling with is that, like many others in Westminster, I just didn’t think enough about the appointment or the past that was known. Also, like many others in Westminster, I filtered the news of it entirely through the lens of whether it seemed a sensible way to help our relationship with a critical ally at a crucial moment.
And so, the real question is not simply how vetting failed, but how moral seriousness failed. A quick rush to fix the system – which will probably not stop the next scandal in any case – will close down the space in which we can arrive at serious changes; not just in process, but in culture and behaviour.
People join the Labour party because of a belief in equality and social justice. Yet that very motivation conceals a danger. As George Orwell warned, belief in a righteous cause can easily become a licence for cruelty, deception and moral indifference. If you believe you are on the right side it is easy to turn a blind eye.
We need to be honest about the fact that if women such as Jess Phillips had been in that room when the decision was taken, Mandelson would never have been sent to Washington. I was struck listening to the debate in the Commons last week that powerful speeches made by women such as the Labour MP Polly Billington were also accompanied with exhaustion at having to make the same points that they, and many others, have raised before about the culture of sexism and misogyny in public life, as well as in every school, workplace and community in our country.
“The standard you walk by is the standard you accept,” as the saying goes. That is why diversity in leadership is so important and why we need to push back hard at those who think that equality, diversity and inclusion are tick-boxes or fringe issues. Diversity brings different perspectives to every place where power resides. Who is in the room shapes what is said out loud, what is noticed, what is deemed to count, and what is silently laid aside. The absence of women’s voices in moments like this is not incidental; it is part of the explanation. This is a scandal, first and foremost, about the way men treat women and girls – and not just monsters such as Epstein, but through everyday sexism. We cannot allow that terrible truth to disappear.
I have seen it in the NHS I lead. From victims of some its worst scandals to women such as a close female relative, whose severe pain was ignored by her male doctor not once but twice until her male partner vouched for her pain. Even the NHS, founded on principles of equality, ignores women’s voices and experiences.
We can’t let this scandal be another that passes by without real change. The rules we live by cannot substitute for behaviour. There is no vetting good enough, no rules tight enough, no system of accountability strong enough if we do not understand this. We have to have the courage to speak up when silence is easier. We have to confront these moral questions. Politics is hard. Most of the choices are hard and some of them are tragic. But we need to accept that some forms of power are not worth the moral price they extract.
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Wes Streeting is health secretary
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