Women Politicians In The United Kingdom

"One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people’s hands. Nothing changes. It is awful to hear people on the doorstep saying: "You politicians are all in it for yourselves." But that's nowhere near as bad as hearing that people feel they have no one to represent them. That's the disaster, not the fact that I have to weather a Twitter storm."

"Assange has, for seven years, evaded accusations of sexual violence in Sweden."

"The trouble is that many of those who like what Assange did with WikiLeaks are willing to look the other way about the accusations against him. The same people who would march for women's rights wearing pussy hats and waving banners about what a sexist pig Trump is are not feminist allies when their gods are found to be fallible. Platitudes about how we should never say women are lying when they come forward about rape suddenly don't fit any more and now women are making up sexual violence as part of an American conspiracy."

"All the talk about rebuilding the economy post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-austerity, is always about diggers [...] I mean, do something to make sure everyone gets to play with the digger. What have they done to get more women signed up to digger courses? Make sure I can control a digger."

"[Referring to domestic violence.] It took until the third [statement during the first lockdown] for the prime minister to even mention it. And the first penny that reached the frontline was five months after the crisis started. It’s not for the want of people like me, in the beginning, being like "we should think about this". When Covid-19 was still just a thing in China, we were talking about rising rates of domestic abuse that were being reported by Chinese charities."

"We punish mothers for falling prey, rather than see how we can help them be the best moms that they can be and support them. We treat people terribly – we tell people that it's their fault that they're victims and that they're going to have their children removed because they haven't protected them."

"Reading out the list of names of women killed by men compiled by the femicide census as I do every year on International Women's Day will, no matter what I do in the future, never be rivalled by anything else in my political life. It is the thing most strangers approach me about when I am out and about. I've been told so many times that I read out the name of someone's daughter, sister, friend or mother. It catches me off guard whenever this happens. I'm struck by the honour that families feel to see their loved one's name exists forever on the public record; a roll call akin to that of fallen soldiers."

"[M]aking women as important as bins."

"In the Johnson and [[Dominic Cummings|[Dominic] Cummings]] era of government, it was often assumed that anything that happened in Westminster was a group of political geniuses playing 3D chess and laying traps for the Labour Party (or opponents from within the government) to fall in to. It did sometimes feel true, although it was my experience that it was more by accident than design. I think it might be fair to say that they were playing 2D chess with quite some skill – until they weren't. Liz Truss, it would seem, cannot even play 1D chess. In fact, I am not sure her particular operation could be compared to the shape-sorting toys a one-year-old can master."

"I have seen again and again how women's lives are considered a niche issue rather than the main event. If there are no powerful women in the room, it will continue to happen. I can already hear the rebuttal that Liz Truss was a woman and she was dreadful, but that argument only holds if you think that Liz Truss is the embodiment of all women and her failure belongs to us all. Liz Truss didn't fail because she was a woman, she failed because she was a right-wing ideologue who was unfit for the job. I can see plenty of those left around the cabinet table so they can't be too fussed about that."

"You get low-level sexism all the time. I've defended other women in the chamber. I know women who work for me, certainly Black women, have found Westminster to be oppressive. Lots of men shush me because I'm quite rowdy. I get lots of comments like "calm down, the honourable lady acts with her heart". In the post-Me Too world, you get joking comments like "am I allowed to ask you to pass the milk?" or "I don't know if I'm allowed to say this to me, but you look lovely". ... Quite a lot of Tory men treat me like I'm some sort of exotic bird. People act like I'm either a pain or something to be marvelled at. You can see sometimes in meetings, women are asked to do things like get the tea. The expectation of them being stupid and annoying is quite common – that is very irritating. There is a power imbalance, there is an element of impunity."

"The Russell Brand exposé by the Sunday Times and Dispatches for Channel 4 would have not long ago been overwhelmingly applauded as thorough, well-sourced and sensitively managed journalism. Instead, we have seen the exact reason why women don't speak up."

"This week has been one of the toughest weeks in politics since I entered parliament. I have tried to do everything that I could to make it so that this was not the outcome, but it is with a heavy heart that I will be leaving my post in the shadow Home Office team. On this occasion I must vote with my constituents, my head, and my heart which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine. I can see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future."

"[Entering the elevator in Portcullis House] My husband's a lift engineer and he always takes the stairs."

"My only ambition in politics is to halve the levels of violence experienced by women and girls in a decade. Despite two women dying every week there is still no strategy or target around femicide. We live in a patriarchy still. It is 2024 but all our institutions are based on a 1950s, or 1850s or even 1750s ideal that doesn’t work for women"

"[To pro-Palestinian hecklers] I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence."

"[The UK is] in desperate need and our politics [is] in even greater need of cleaning up and I thank everyone in this room for making a really good spectacle of proving that for me."

"[The vandalising of cars used by Phillips' team were filmed for social media postings] The reason they're filming is to drive content, to incite more intimidation [...] In my constituency, the humiliation was by men, to women. And they wish to drive content ... that's what our politics has become - humiliation. Content-driven grift."

"She compares activist-journalist Owen Jones and Novara Media writers to noisy, overexcited children who have had too much sugar – "Who cares what they think, frankly.""

"But what mattered most to [[w:Karen Ingala Smith|[Karen] Ingala Smith]] were women’s names, not numbers. So in 2016 she was delighted when the Labour MP Jess Phillips – who’d previously worked for Women's Aid – asked to read them out on International Women's Day. Now this roll call of more than 120 stolen lives, recited to a hushed House of Commons, has become an annual commemoration. "Dead women is a thing we’ve all just accepted as part of our daily lives," Phillips said last year, when among the names was Sarah Everard. The list not only put male violence in the national spotlight but, says Ingala Smith, "Family after family have said how important it is to hear their loved one’s name read out in parliament, and know it is recorded in Hansard for ever.""

"On a cold February morning in 1968, a young man, not yet 21, stepped off a plane at Heathrow airport, nervously folding away his one-way ticket from Kenya. He had no family, no friends and was clutching only his most valuable possession, his British passport. His homeland was in political turmoil. Kenya had kicked him out for being British. My father never returned. He made his life here in Britain, starting on the shop floor of a paint factory. My mother, recruited by the NHS in Mauritius as a girl of 18, passed her 45th year of service last year. My family had nothing but hopes and dedication. They were so proud to be British and so proud to make our country even better. If I succeed in making some small contribution during my time in this place, it will reflect only a fraction of my gratitude to this country for the abundance of education, culture and traditions that have made Britain great, for the tolerance and fellowship of the British people, and for the opportunity and liberty that we all enjoy."

"My clearest recollection of our Home Secretary’s legal acumen came from day one as an MP [in 2015]. We had a presentation from IPSA UK. Her question to IPSA concerned whether a speeding ticket occurred during the course of parliamentary duties could be claimed on expenses [...] Rather embarrassed, the representative from IPSA said no. [...] Thank goodness our Nation has been blessed with such a fine Attorney General and Home Secretary."

"If he fired her there would be a big row, there would be a lot of fireworks. But ultimately, prime ministers tend to win those encounters because the Home Secretary will suddenly become a backbencher. And then she’ll quickly lose her purchase - think of Priti Patel. No disrespect to Priti, but she's not as powerful a voice on the backbenches as she was as Home Secretary."

"[Following Braverman's removal as Home Secretary] Being a forceful personality or associated with a particular wing of the party does not stop you being a successful senior minister. But persistently making statements from which your colleagues feel compelled to back away certainly does. Braverman ruined many good arguments with language that did not sit well with the need for a home secretary to encourage calm, good order and an appreciation throughout the country that we have to understand the views of others."

"[M]uch about Braverman is startling. She is the Home Secretary who was sacked for leaking a government document, but reinstated six days later; the former attorney general who condoned the government’s breaking of international law; the erstwhile barrister who wants to curb the power of the judiciary; the daughter of first-generation immigrants who wants to slash both legal and illegal immigration. At October’s Conservative Party conference, she fantasised about a Telegraph front page showing a deportation plane taking off for Rwanda. "That’s my dream," she said. "That’s my obsession." Braverman is a Brexit "ultra". She defends the empire. She deplores "cultural Marxism", net-zero targets, the police "policing pronouns on Twitter" and "Benefit Street culture". Last month she blamed the disruption caused by climate protestors on "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati"."

"On Monday, at the "National Conservative" conference in London, she declared that net annual migration to the UK must be reduced as a matter of urgency, lest Britons become irrevocably "dependent" on foreign labour and start "forgetting how to do things for ourselves"."

"I have been wondering what, if anything, might persuade Suella Braverman that her rhetoric and strategy to slash immigration might conceivably have gone too far. Nigel Farage staging an intervention? Tommy Robinson calling for a "cooling-off period"? A social media post by Donald Trump urging the home secretary to "take it easy over there in Scotland"?"

"What Donald Trump has taught us is that politics is not for the faint of heart. It demands conviction, clarity and a willingness to take risks. For Trump, the fight has never been about personal gain or elite approval – it has been about the people."

"If we keep disagreeing with Reform on many and fundamental things, we won't get those votes back. We have no God-given right to them. Any Tory leader who rejects Reform voters, doubles down on the disastrous decisions the last cabinet let Rishi Sunak make."

"If we don't recover the voters we deliberately, and arrogantly, spurned, we will turn the Conservative Party into the 21st century version of the 20th century Liberal Party. And we can do better than being a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks, who make it our business to insult our should-be voters for not being as smug and self-righteous as we are."

"We were slaughtered. Shellacked. Given a good hiding. Kicked while we were on the ground. Headbutted by reality."

"Our problem is us. Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone’s fault but their own. My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame."

"[On the Conservative's electoral rival, Reform UK] We need to, in the future, to find some way to work together because there shouldn’t be big differences between us. [...] I would welcome Nigel [Farage] into the Conservative party. There's not much difference really between him and many of the policies that we stand for. We are a broad church, we should be a welcoming party and an inclusive party and if someone is supportive of the party, that's a precondition and they want Conservatives to get elected then they should be welcomed."

"[T]o regain control of our borders properly and faithfully to the British people we do need to ultimately leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Judging from my conversations with him [Rishi Sunak], he never agreed with me on the proposition that I just set out."

"The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission."

"Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law?"

"The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters."

"Now as we approach a particularly significant weekend in the life of our nation, one which calls for respect and commemoration, the hate marchers — a phrase I do not resile from — intend to use Armistice Day to parade through London in yet another show of strength."

"What I want to stop, and what the law abiding majority wants us to stop, is those who cause nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public spaces, aggressively begging, stealing, taking drugs, littering, and blighting our communities."

"The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice."

"I'm afraid we do see many instances where people purport to be gay when they're not actually gay, but in order to get special treatment. It's not the way our asylum system should work/"

"It is no betrayal of my parents' story to say that immigration must be controlled."

"If cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted. Eventually it will disappear."

"Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades. Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society. And, in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society."

"[Claiming the threshold of the Refugee Convention had been lowered for asylum seekers] Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary. But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if, in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection."

"I'm here in America to talk about a critical and shared global challenge: uncontrolled and illegal migration [...] It is an existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the west."

"People like my Rt Hon Friend the Member for North East Somerset and Douglas Murray express mainstream, insightful and perfectly decent political views. People may disagree with them, but in no way are they extremists."

"Those prognosticators of doom who said that Brexit would be an economic catastrophe for the UK – not only were they wrong, they demonstrated a profound ignorance of the British people when they attributed their legitimate desire to regain our national sovereignty as some mix of stupidity and xenophobia."

"I want to put something on the record, it's perfectly respectable for a child of immigrants like me to say I'm deeply grateful to live here, to say that immigration has been overwhelmingly good for Great Britain but that we've had too much of it in recent years. And to say that uncontrolled and illegal migration is simply bad. Yet, despite our reasonable concerns we've raised on several occasions, I am subject to the most grotesque slurs for saying simple truths about the impact of unlimited and illegal immigration. The worst among them poisoned by the extreme ideology of identity politics suggests that a person's skin colour should dictate their political views. I will not be hectored by out of touch lefties or anyone for that matter. I won't be patronised on what appropriate views for someone of my background can hold. I will not back down when faced with spurious accusations of bigotry. When such smears seep into the discourse of this chamber, as they did last week, accusations that this government's policies, policies backed by the majority of the British people, are bigoted, are xenophobic, are dog whistles to racists, it is irresponsible and frankly beneath the dignity of this place. Politicians of all stripes should know better and they should choose their words carefully."

"I condemn the appalling disorder in Knowsley last night. The alleged behaviour of some asylum seekers is never an excuse for violence and intimidation. Thank you to @merseypolice officers for keeping everyone safe."