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The Women's Equality Party (WE) this morning hailed the results of its first ever Westminster elections as a stunning vindication of its founding principles of collaborative politics, progressive values and the need to fundamentally reimagine the democratic process.

“When we started the party, we said ‘voters don’t want politics as usual’,” said party co-founder and president Catherine Mayer. “We also pointed to a consensus for progressive values that traversed party boundaries yet was constantly stymied by old-style partisan politics. If this election has proved anything, it is the scale of the appetite for those values and for a new politics.”

“The outcome of this election—a hung Parliament—means any parties seeking to implement the mandate for those values will now have to follow our lead and focus on finding ways to work together.”

The Women’s Equality Party also celebrated the extraordinary achievements of its seven general election candidates, who changed the conversation and raised the game, forcing gender equality on to centre stage.

“These brilliant women, none of whom had any history of political involvement, show individually and collectively how much better politics would be if it drew on all the talent available, rather than remaining a white man’s club,” said Mayer. “During the campaign I saw Sophie Walker’s opponents complaining she was ‘too good’. I heard Harini Iyengar tipped as a future Prime Minister. Just yesterday a young Asian woman came up to tell me how thrilled she had been to vote for Nimco Ali. It was amazing, she said, to be able to vote with 100 per cent enthusiasm. All of our candidates have drawn many, many responses like this.”

WE party leader Sophie Walker led the charge nationally and in Shipley against Conservative Philip Davies, whose 10,000-vote majority had been deemed by Labour to be unassailable. WE’s ground campaign lit a fire under the Shipley contest, prompting a surge in progressive votes that came close to unseating Davies, a notorious anti-feminist.

"I entered this race because Shipley and the UK deserve so much better than Philip Davies," said Sophie Walker. “Our campaign galvanised the progressive response to Davies—and also showed the potential of progressive alliance. We are proud to have led the way with the Green Party, who stood down their candidate to campaign alongside us.”

The campaign showed how much WE can achieve, but it also highlighted the urgent need for electoral reform—and for the Women’s Equality Party. The first-past-the-post system has been proven globally to exclude women and minorities. It also encourages progressives to fight each other. It is also a system that demands huge resources and is unnecessarily expensive, issues that become even more acute for smaller parties in a snap election. For all of these reasons, WE advocates for a fairer proportional system.

The iniquities of the electoral system are compounded by broadcasting guidelines, meant to ensure impartiality during elections, that instead skews the system further by putting more weight on past electoral performance than the current level of membership. “This is why UKIP was splattered all over the nation’s TV screens, while the Women’s Equality Party and the Greens could barely get a look-in,” says Catherine Mayer. “Print media followed broadcast’s lead on this, and in misrepresenting the election as a contest between the two biggest parties instead of what it was, a contest between competing regressive and progressive values.” 

Some media coverage did acknowledge the impact of the Women’s Equality Party and the importance of the WE manifesto. “Their prospectus did make me wonder how much more women could be valued in our society if all parties had the imagination to think this differently and comprehensively," wrote ITV economics editor Noreena Hertz. Zoe Williams in the Guardian praised the manifesto as “an extraordinary document” and the party for “doing the painstaking graft of reimagining all politics through the lens of equality”. 

But the story about the Women’s Equality Party that made the biggest headlines, on the eve of election day, underscored the reason for the party’s existence. Female staff working at the party’s London headquarters in the evening received multiple abusive phone calls from a number of men, one of whom said he was coming to the office and that they should be scared. Nimco Ali, WE candidate for Hornsey & Wood Green, received a letter full of racial and Islamophobic abuse and signed “Jo Cox”, the name of the female MP brutally murdered in 2016.

“Two of the Women’s Equality Party’s core objectives are an end to violence against women and girls and equal representation. The fact that people tried to intimidate us and stop our campaign shows how urgent those objectives are,” said Catherine Mayer.

Notes:

The Women’s Equality Party contested seven seats in the general election:

• Shipley: Sophie Walker won 1040 votes = 1.9% of vote share
• Tunbridge Wells: Celine Thomas won 702 votes = 1.3% of vote share
• Vauxhall: Harini Iyengar won 539 votes = 1% of vote share
• Hornsey & Wood Green: Nimco Ali won 551 votes = 0.9% of vote share
• Stirling: Kirstein Rummery won 337 votes  = 0.7%
• Manchester Withington: Sally Carr won 234 votes = 0.4% of vote share
• Vale of Glamorgan: Sharon Lovell won 177 votes = 0.3% of vote share

The Women’s Equality Party was established to highlight and dismantle obstacles to gender equality in the UK: a political and economic architecture rigged against women and diversity, an education system riven with unconscious bias and gender stereotyping, a media that reinforces these stereotypes, a society that assigns little value to caregiving and therefore assumes it to be women’s business, that underpays women and invests less in women's health and permits endemic harassment and violence against women.

The Party currently has 65,000 members and registered supporters. It aims to put equality for women at the top of the national political agenda by being an electoral force that also works with other political parties; in addition to party membership it also offers joint memberships to members of other political parties.

Yvan Mayeur, the mayor of Brussels 1000, announced he would quit after revelations he secretly received €1,400 monthly to be a board member of the SAMU Social, the entity tasked with helping Brussels’ poorest and most vulnerable residents.

A SAMU Social is a municipal humanitarian emergency service in several cities in France and worldwide whose purpose is to provide care and medical ambulatory aid and nursing to homeless people and people in social distress. This is partially accomplished via mobile units which distribute food, hot drinks, blankets, etc. Its nickname has been not well accepted because it bears confusion with a SAMU (Service d'Aide Médicale Urgente), which is an ambulance service.

Image: Yvan Mayeur, mayor of Brussels

Profits at Sir Philip Green’s retail empire plummeted by 79% last year, with the failure of BHS and tough competition in the clothing market contributing to the poor performance. A report filed with Companies House by Taveta Investments, showed pre-tax profits for the 12 months to August 2016 fell to £36.8, down from £172.2m the previous year. Total sales fell 2.5% to £2.02bn.

More than 40,000 polling stations will be open from 07:00 until 22:00 BST. Currently around 46.9 million people registered to vote.

Results from the first of the 650 constituencies to declare are expected before midnight, while the final tally should be known by Friday afternoon.

To form a majority in the House of Commons, one party must win 326 seats. This is a chance for those unhappy with the way the government and the DWP have been treating people. So make your vote count. 

We featured Mandie Holgate, Author, Coach, Broadcaster & Professional Speaker earlier in the year.

Mandie’s book - Fight The Fear -  is now available in Russia we are told.

No need to go that far to buy yours – we are advised leading UK bookstores will have a copy.

Has Putin read it yet we ask, or even: Donald Trump!! 

Image: Mandie Holgate

SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon will be joined by her husband Peter Murrell as they cast their votes for the General Election at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station tomorrow. When: 0900 Thursday 8th June Where: Broomhouse Community Hall, 2 Baillieston Road, Glasgow, G71 7SB.  

You must pre-register before attending the event with louise.donegan@snp.org

UK workers will face the biggest real wage fall of any advanced economy in 2018, according to OECD figures released today (Wednesday).

The figures show that UK real wages will fall by 1.1% in 2018 – putting the UK and Finland at joint-bottom of the league for wage growth among OECD countries.

All other OECD members (with the exception of Italy and Mexico) will experience real wage increases in 2018. Average real wage growth across the OECD will be 1.1%.

TUC research has shown that UK workers’ real wages are still lower than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. The average worker’s real wages are down over £1,200 a year on 2008.

Commenting on the news from the OECD, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:

“Boosting wages has to be a top priority for whoever gets the keys to Downing Street.

“British workers still haven’t recovered from the last financial crisis. The last thing they can afford is another hit on their finances.

“Britain badly needs a pay rise – working people must make their voices heard on Thursday

Research by the Liberal Democrats has shown that over 10,000 operations were cancelled due to hospital beds being unavailable in 2016, up almost 60% from two years ago. Across 40 NHS trusts in England, the number of operations cancelled due to beds not being available has almost doubled from 6,545 in 2014 to 10,259 in 2016. In several trusts the number of cancelled operations due to lack of beds has tripled in the last two years, including Epsom St Helier and Weston Super Mare.

Around a third of all operations cancelled were due to bed shortages. The Liberal Democrats have pledged to invest £10bn of capital funding in the NHS over the next parliament to repair run-down hospitals, improve capacity and modernise services The party will also raise around £6bn a year through its landmark policy of putting a penny on income tax to rescue the NHS and social care.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood will cast her vote in the 2017 UK election

When: 10am, Thursday June 8^th 2017

Where: Soar Centre, Tylacelyn Road, Penygraig, CF40 1JZ

Contact: Helen Bradley 07888754754

Siobhan Sharpe, star of the BBC’s hit comedy programme W1A, features in the Women’s Equality Party’s latest general election campaign film, released today.

You can see the film below.

“We are grateful that Siobhan took time out of what she said was a very busy schedule to be interviewed,” said Women’s Equality Party leader Sophie Walker. “Siobhan had a very interesting exchange of views with our team, who were pleased to help clarify for her some of the finer points of our manifesto. And some of the less finer points.”

The Women’s Equality Party is contesting a total of seven seats in the general election, and has unveiled bold policies including universal free childcare, truly shared parental leave at 90% of pay, and plans for a new, caring economic model that will match investment in physical infrastructure with investment in social infrastructure.  

“We believe we could make history in this election, going from a kernel of an idea to a party with Westminster representation in under two years,” said Walker, who is contesting “anti-political correctness” Conservative candidate Philip Davies for the Yorkshire seat of Shipley. “We have fresh ideas, brilliant and diverse candidates, and a drive to work cross-party to get the job done in the quickest time. We think that’s the kind of politics that people want to see.”

Siobhan Sharpe was unavailable for comment.