Tony Benn against postive discrimination: we all should be

That fine old warhorse, Tony Benn, was on the Today programme with his granddaughter, and he came out against positive discrimination. His own solution was a double representation for each seat of one man and one women. This was an interesting idea, and in a political entity untroubled by ethnic politics, it might have worked; but as even John Humphries was able to notice, a call for men-women seats would lead to a call for white-black-asian seats, such is the logic of identity politics as conceived today where everyone who is not a white male heterosexual is assumed to be oppressed. Benn’s common sense article was that black women would also benefit, Asian women would also benefit .. but this got lost in the discussion. However, it is interesting how a radical from a previous generation can cut through the pieties of today.

As for positive discrimination for women in parliamentary seats, it is an attack on local democracy, because it means that a higher proportion of candidates imposed on the constituency by the party leadership on the basis that they are women, black, Asian, gay, etc. Whatever the supposed justification, this means more top-down control and less chance that a local man or woman of whatever race or religion or sexuality will get the nomination. That local person might be more inclined to represent his constituents than the leader whose placeman (placeperson) he is. Of course whether you call him a placeperson or placeman will not make the candidate a more honest politician or alleviate the potential for cronyism that an increase in top-down appointments will cause. That person will have been appointed because they fit well with the ideas of the current leadership rather than the party base, and he or she will vote accordingly. We have seen how pliant the Blair Babes were, and how Parliament as an institution has sunk even further since 1997. More women in parliament has done nothing to prevent that; I would suggest that the increase in the proportion of MPs placed there because of their sex, will have assisted the decline in parliamentary democracy.

True to her generation, Tony Benn’s granddaughter, Emily, seemed to cautiously support positive discrimination for women. There is a flaw here in that supporters of this policy assume that woman’s interests are the same, that the women elected truly represent other women: in Parliament today, we have a lot of women with children, looked after no doubt by nannys and the best childcare; not surprisingly they voted for child care solutions that benefit women who go out to work rather than helping women who stay at home and look after their children, a choice which, it is increasingly recognised, affects the development of the child (children with stay-at-home mothers being advantaged); so these women may represent working women but they fail to represent the traditional role of motherhood, which many women would like to follow if they could afford it. The same argument can go for candidates selected on the basis or race or religion.

What positive discrimination achieves is diversity of sex, creed, race, sexuality etc – i.e., it ticks all the boxes in an identity-obsessed political culture; but it further homogenises political opinion, because the particular woman or black person promoted to office by the centre will be chosen because they are amenable to their political patrons. This is the diversity the BBC likes: lots of black and brown faces all peddling, with occasional exceptions, the same stultifying, narrow left-liberal views. This is especially true of flagship prime-time shows like the Today programme. As Mary Kenny said (on The Moral Maze), the output of opinion from the BBC is very homogenous, in spite of all the tick-boxing pretensions to diversity. But why stop at identity politics: why not discriminate against political apparatchiks in favour of software engineers?; or for scientists against lawyers? That would bring a much more meaningful diversity into the political culture and would be more likely to improve the quality of decision-making.