Jayne Dowle: Making a mockery of standards in public life

However, I also learned about something called “standards in public life”. That’s the code by which anyone who seeks political office is expected to go about their business.

The sorry tale of Lord Rennard, the Lib Dem peer suspended from his party over allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women, makes a mockery of it all.

It calls into question the rights and responsibilities of politicians. It reveals the Lib Dems as a fractured political force, riven with rivalry and in-fighting. This is the campaign chief, for heaven’s sake. If he can’t keep his mind on the job he’s paid to do, what hope for the rest of them?

And before we even get onto whether Lord Rennard made unwanted advances towards women or not, it is a poor reflection of the characters of those who go into politics.

The testimonies we have from the various women involved make Rennard look like an opportunistic fool. And the whole business makes those who are calling for his reinstatement, such as Lord Steel, look like self-serving snakes in the grass.

Some of us will remember Steel as the man responsible for the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised the practice and made it easier for women to make a choice. He was a hero to the women’s movement. His latest stance proves that he is no hero for women at all.

It’s not my job to take sides. That’s for the interminable inquiry which will no doubt follow the back-stabbing and back-covering. If I was a loyal Lib Dem activist, however, wearied from more than three years of coalition government and sick of apologising for unpopular policies done in my name, I’d be throwing all my campaigning leaflets in the nearest bin.

Here is a party which has made fairness and equality its unique selling point. Yet, when push comes to an arm around the shoulder, it’s proving itself to be as sexually unreconstructed as the committee of a working men’s club in 1975.

I don’t much care about the pathetic details we hear about Lord Rennard’s alleged “seduction” techniques. He’s deluded if he thinks that sexual favours can be bought for a square of hotel chocolate. He’s daft if he reckons that modern women don’t have a raft of taxi numbers already in their mobile phones, ready to make a quick exit when the witching hour chimes. If he expects anything more than a slap on the face for a hand on a knee, he needs to wake up and read Cosmopolitan.

I feel aggrieved for the women who are bringing the allegations. Rennard’s refusal to admit his failings and say sorry compounds their anger and distress. If his threatened legal action goes ahead, it is possible that their own personal lives will be put through the public wringer. This seems grossly unfair to me. Whoever did what to whom, they are not the ones who are alleged to have done anything wrong.

There must be worried women in workplaces all over the country wondering whether they dare speak up now. It’s so hard to draw an official line between friendly work banter and something much less friendly. That’s the problem with sexual harassment.

It literally creeps up on you. No legislation or guidance in the world can prevent it from happening. Yet most men realise that there is a wrong and a right way to behave in a position of power and adjust their approach accordingly. And most of us who work with men eventually find our own way of dealing with embarrassing overtures.

The major issue here is that in Rennard’s case, the inappropriate actions appear to have gone on for so long – almost a decade. And his party leadership appears to have done so little about it.

This is a problem endemic to any large modern organisation though. And it’s not one confined to alleged sexual harassment.

Whether it’s child protection going tragically wrong or failings in the NHS, how many times have we heard that management looked the other way, ignored the emails and put their heads in the sand? In this case, the years have added dangerous momentum.

The Lib Dems always promised a different approach to the political process. Openness and transparency have been their watch words. Compromise has been their key to survival. I’d suggest that, at the very least, everybody involved should stop, take a step back and remember this. There’s a General Election to fight around the corner. There’s a membership aghast at this scandal. Time is running out. The personal has become damagingly political.

If the Lib Dems want to come out of this with any credibility whatsoever, it is time to put aside the personal for the political good.