So, how was it for you? Did you dance a jig as dozens of so-called Tory big beasts lost their seats during last week’s election? Did the sight of Rishi Sunak apologising for the Conservatives being rinsed out office move you to tears of joy? Much as I confess a soft spot for ex-MP Liz Truss (maybe because, as Caitlyn Moran noted, Liz is so bad at politics yet momentarily got to be PM, it could inspire almost any woman to think bloody hell, so could I), I felt emotionally relieved the Tory lunatics are no longer running the asylum. Instead we have Changed Labour – who promised little concretely, and who’d better get a move on regarding their change mantra, because Reform is waiting in the wings like the archangel of Death…. claws a-ready.
More soberly, this was an election that bucked the European trend, not only by its outcome (did you see France?) but also the clarity of Labour’s win. Their 412 seat majority gifts them the power to roll through legislative decisions. As a woman profoundly interested in who runs our country, and how, these are my immediate suggestions for Starmer and his new regime.
Firstly, how Britain responds to international conflicts. I’m encouraged by Labour deciding to drop a Tory bid to delay the International Criminal Court making a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza. But – the British government – including Labour – has so far utterly failed Palestinians in Gaza, and the West Bank. Beyond the minefield of Israel’s war on the people of Gaza, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy needs the wisdom to look beyond militarisation as the answer to entrenched bloody conflicts from Sudan to Yemen and the Sahel.
I’ve worked in peace-building for many years, and I’ve seen the horrific failures of military-only strategies; which often aren’t strategies at all, but blunt force-meets-superior-force game of warfare chicken, where civilians are frequently massacred. I know how crude this sounds. I’ve worked in Gaza, the Central African Republic and Mali and seen for myself how communities so often caught in the cross-hairs of armed forces – military and paramilitary groups – also turn on each other as deadly violence becomes normalised.
Secondly, Labour needs to move on comprehensively addressing horrific levels of misogyny and violence against women and girls across the UK. If you’re skeptical that violence against women is a national epidemic, consider this: current UK rape conviction rates are 2%. To put this another way, two percent of reports to the police of rape end in a criminal conviction. This is shameful, and itself a massive violation of womens’ rights.
The feminist campaigner Laura Bates was recently on TV explaining that some days she receives 200 death and rape threats. In one day. Meanwhile, alleged rapist Andrew Tate, now also accused of tax evasion in the UK, has poisonous influence on how young men and boys see, and treat, women and girls. Sexual harrassment at work, the gender pay gap, domestic violence, policemen killing and raping women, women losing access to single-sex spaces including whilst in prison, I could go on, and on.
The Labour party has vowed to halve violence against women and girls in a decade and they have some decent strategies that will need full funding and expertise guided by campaigners like Laura. This needs to include parliament itself, where two thirds of women MPs say they’ve witnessed, or endured, sexism at work.
And thirdly, it’s the water, stupid. We need clean drinking water, clean rivers and lakes and seas to walk beside, to swim in, to savour, and for plants and animals to thrive. England, I can’t quite believe this madness myself, is the only country in the world to have 100% privatised its water industry, and look – just 14% of lakes and rivers are reasonably clean. Last year sewage spills in England and Wales lasted a total of 4.6 million hours. Swimmers in England and Wales are, quite literally, bathing in shit, and effects on wildlife of this ‘cocktail of bacteria’ is devastating.
Scotland, meanwhile, has a publicly-owned water provider, Scottish Water. It’s not perfect here (for example, only 4% of sewage overflows are actually monitored): however, Scottish water has invested 30% more than England / Wales in publicly owned water infrastructure, and we still have lower bills, though we definitely need more rigorous water testing. One report says more than half of Scotland’s most popular beaches have been blighted with dangerous sewage levels.
I advise the new government to incentivise English/Welsh water companies to clean up their act by canceling all water company Director’s bonuses until they’ve hit clearly agreed targets (these bonuses have added up to £54 million since 2019). The Lib Dems (who also did very well in the election) have lobbied for the water regulator, OFWAT, to be replaced by a brand new agency with ramped up powers to fine water companies for poisoning our water. I would add prison sentences to the sanctions to be applied for repeated offences, then they would stop pouring sewage into our seas.
Labour has promised to put water companies under Special Measures to start tackling this obscenity – though they’ve not been transparent about exactly what special measures actually mean.
In Scotland, the SNP clearly has a lot of work to do on this issue. One shining example of community-led change is Scotland’s only coastal ‘no take zone’ where some marine life has gone from the brink of extinction to thriving. It all goes to show how communities often need to lead our governments by the nose.
Keir Starmer has promised this Changed Labour government will be a political reset: an administration of service. We are all watching, Prime Minister.
