Reasons to be glad Louise Mensch has gone / Reasons to be sad Louise Mensch has gone.

[chiller]

Reasons to be glad Louise Mensch has gone:1) She was a cheerleader for Cameron and Murdoch. While one expects support for the PM from any Tory to some degree, Mensch's cheerleading was often in flagrant disregard of the facts and certainly had the appearance of being one of two things: either entirely self-serving from a career point of view, or

Comments

[whatsagirlgotta]

I think it would be more accurate to say, my husband lives on another continent instead of family life. But y'know family life is the classic Tory MP excuse, although I forget who tweeted it, but the gist was if an MP who is a woman says it she probably is going off to look after her family, if a male MP says it, it probably means scandal.

Although MPs don't get things like maternity leave guarantees, it has to be negotiated with your party whip, so being a woman and an MP who wants/has kids is a shitty stick.

[whatsagirlgotta]

Hell yes, I wish she was an actual feminist willing to use that platform. I don't mean that in a policing my "sister" 's politics way, or maybe I do its a very blue feminism if she is.

[almostwitty]

Reasons to be sad #2

2) Lots of old Tories will be muttering "Well, what's the point in spotting female talent, giving them special leave and dispensation, if they're just going to give up after a year due to family commitments anyway?".

3) She was the nearest thing we'll see to a former rock'n'roll MP, the kind of person who can at least admit to taking Class A drugs on national TV.

[hirez]

(3) was cringeworthy, awful and entirely the opposite of rock&roll. Lydon was the only one making any sense on that issue.

Cristopher Mayhew, on the other hand, was very rock&roll indeed.

[chiller]

I was surprised and delighted by Lydon.

[kaskazi]

I really don't think that she is going off to New York in order to suckle babies and wipe up sicky goo.

If she spent more time working directly with her constituency then she'd have more time to be an MP.

[chiller]

I don't know - tough to work 2 days in London and live 5 days in NY. Very tough. I have sympathy with her on a personal level, while being thrilled that she is (temporarily, I bet), out of UK politics.

[kaskazi]

I worked in the Netherlands in the German border for more than five years with my family in York, commuting back and forth. I bet my commute was about the same time as London - New York. The 'plane from Leeds-Bradford was full of people doing the same thing. I don't have sympathy with her on that level. I think she has attention deficient disorder and an inability to think clearly, and she has my sympathy for that. My instinct is that she is moving to NY for strategic political reasons and is playing the family card to enable a departure with good grace. The US elections are coming up... :)

[chiller]

Having done the NY-London commute I should point out that it's not just about journey time - the jet-lag really is hell.

I suspect you're right - she's either going to do something political in the US, or jump into Murdoch's tv empire. Or both.

[xxxlibris]

Reason, er, 27? to be sad - she was the Tory Pandora Braithwaite and I am always so happy to see fictional characters made flesh, even if they are the awful ones.

[chiller]

I'd rather they weren't involved in the process of government. ;)

[biascut]

Pandora Braithwaite wasn't even on the same scale as posh as Mensch!

[moral_vacuum]

There is a particular strain if Tory feminist that a) wouldn't recognise their own privilege if it bit them on the bum, and b) that a woman acting selfiahly and doing whatever she feels like and bugger the impact on anyone else (including other women) is therefore engaging in feminist empowerment.

[chiller]

Oh yes - and that's not just Tory feminists, it applies equally to the stripping-lapdancing-empowering branch of feminism, too. I think of these as people-who-use-feminism-as-a-justification rather than actual feminists.