Pink. What is the Labour Party’s obsession with using pink when they’re trying to represent a woman or attract female voters?
Look at Harriet Harman’s pink election van, or Angela Eagle’s campaign posters – the party is obsessed with playing on gender differences to elevate women.
Voters want to elect a woman on the same mandate as a man – not just because they are female. This – as will be proved by Theresa May today – is where the Conservatives are leaving Labour in the dust.
Soon-to-be Prime Minister May has discussed how she has never felt held back by her gender within the Conservatives. Her leadership campaign focused on her experience at the highest levels of Government.
She has seldom mentioned her gender, and certainly didn’t but it front and centre No pink in sight.
Labour has yet to catch up. Eagle’s campaign material – a backdrop that wouldn’t look out of place on Loose Women, repelled me immediately. When she spoke she won back some of her lost dignity – but many wouldn’t get as far as that.
Harman’s pink van put off so many female voters precisely because they did not want to feel pressured into making a decision based on their gender.
Engaging with female voters is great, but we don’t want to be treated like children in a sweet shop. We want to be treated like equal members of society, and not be defined by our gender in our choices.
Labour’s all-female shortlists have not helped either – the Tories have never used this process, yet somehow came up with a female leader and a female Scottish leader, with many women in top positions – and, by the looks of things, many more to come.
By reducing selection to a gender game, candidates can be dumped into positions they for which they are ill-suited – and will always struggle to convince that they “earned” their status.
For Labour to catch up with the Tories, they need to reassess their approach.
Female candidates need to put themselves forward without the parade of pink, and go toe-to-toe with the men.
Politicians are politicians, regardless of gender, and it’s time that Labour caught on and stopped treating female voters like four-year-olds picking out a Barbie doll.
