Loss of an ‘inspiring’ MP a blow for all shades of opinion

“I’ve heard she’s a good constituency MP, she has made a good contribution to political debate in this country, and she has at times adopted different positions that the party whips might not have necessarily been happy with. All this is commendable,” says Dr Deane, a lecturer in political theory at Leeds University.

They may not all have admired her party or her thoughts on particular policy matters, but Mensch, the 41-year-old mother of three who has just announced that she is standing down in order to spend more time with her family and to live in New 
York with her husband of one 
year, rock band manager Peter Mensch, has been praised by politicians and commentators of different stripes.

The clever, confident, articulate and maverick Mensch, who was 
a successful chick-lit author before entering the Commons in 2010, is said to have felt constrained by Conservative whips expecting her to toe the party line at all times.

But it was the business of juggling family life with a parliamentary career and the fact that her husband is based in the US that made her decision to step down necessary, she said.

Even with a concession from PM David Cameron that she could spend an extra day a week in her constituency to see more of her children, Mensch said in her resignation letter “...despite my best efforts, I have been unable to make the balancing act work for our family”.

Mr Cameron said he accepted the resignation with great regret but accepted that her family had to come first.

He added that Mensch had been an “inspiring” MP and hinted that she had been in line for a role in government. Witnessing her fearlessly harrying of the Murdochs during the Culture Committee hearings into phone hacking recently, there’s little doubt of that.

So here we are in 2012, with 505 male and 145 female MPs. Between 1992 and 1997 the number of female members doubled from 60 to 120, but how agonisingly slow progress has been since then. Will talented women in high profile jobs who might consider trying for a political career but also have children view the very capable Mensch’s decision and shelve their ambitions?

The chances are that a solid, unremarkable male prospective Tory candidate will be parachuted in for the by-election on November 15, in a constituency held for 13 years by Labour before Mensch’s success two years ago. Dr Deane believes Mensch’s departure will make a stagnant situation for gender equality in public life even worse.

“During periods of economic and political crisis like this such issues slip into the background and are seen as relatively unimportant, which is 
depressing. There simply isn’t 
the political will either to 
address the wider problem in society of there being a stigma to men taking equal responsibilty for family.”

His colleague, British politics lecturer Dr Victoria Honeyman, says: “Louise Mensch is certainly not one of the nameless, faceless Conservatives. She has a high profile through her use of social media and outspoken views. We need more women in all parties, and MPs in general, who speak their mind, and use the media to communicate with groups who might not otherwise engage with politics.”

The Electoral Reform Society has called for a serious debate about how to get and keep talented people in Parliament. It argues that the culture of our parliament is a real barrier to finding and keeping talented people from all walks of life and that Westminster remains an out-dated gentleman’s club.

Katie Ghose of the ERS said: “Whenever someone on the up steps down we have a duty to ask some tough questions about how politics works.

“Why does a woman tipped for the top opt out? How do 
we get the best and brightest to see politics as ‘something for them’?

‘We know politics is out of 
touch with people and that 
many do not feel a parliament 
of mainly older, middle class white men can accurately represent us. If we don’t find a way of retaining talented individuals – men and 
women – we’ll never have a modern parliament we can feel proud of.”

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