Theresa May must stand up for the women of Northern Ireland – whatever the DUP says

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/28/theresa-may-northern-ireland-dup-abortion-laws-suzanne-moore

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Tears of sorrow, tears of joy. I am not much of a cryer myself, but oof … lots of weeping recently. Repealing the eighth amendment is momentous in ways that are still to play out. The stories – so many stories – that Irish women told of fear, loneliness, desperate journeys, of carrying dead babies to term. Of walking around Liverpool with hot-water bottles before getting on to a ferry and of a woman who was said to be not “dying enough” for a termination: Savita Halappanavar. The horror stories of older women.

The cavalry of young women and men with wheelie suitcases coming home to vote made me cry, each welcomed as a hero. Then there were the exit polls. The silent “don’t knows” did know. They broke the silence and said “yes” and Ireland changed, and we are changed in the UK and beyond because the struggle for women’s reproductive rights is real and respects no borders.

Calls to bring Northern Ireland’s laws into line immediately started, along with a questioning of the paternalistic nature of laws in Great Britain, because Ireland will, in some ways, become more liberal than us. Should we need the signature of two doctors in order to do what we want with our own bodies? Should we have to fake concern about our mental health? Do we want any tampering with time limits in our existing legislation, in the guise of preventing late abortion, when these are tiny in number, and harrowing in circumstance: prompted by domestic violence, extreme youth, psychosis or foetal abnormality? No to all this.

Repeal the eighth has shown the power of brilliant campaigning with clear messaging on trust and inclusiveness. Ireland is no longer socially conservative, riven by divides of age or gender, urban or rural, but instead is unified in decency. I have heard stories of priests telling congregations that if they voted yes they should no longer come to church. Power ebbs from institutions that use shame to control people.

Women are no longer ashamed. I have felt that in the UK for decades. After writing in the early 90s of an abortion I had, I attended many public “speakouts”. These were considered brave or confessional back then, rather than a retelling of an average female experience. Over the years, more and more of us refused shame and the only guilt we expressed was about not feeling sadness, just relief. I heard the magnificent Claire Rayner speak of how, as a young nurse, she laid out the body of a girl of 16 who died of a septic abortion. I met politicians who, in 1967, set out to change the law, not to win votes but because it was the right thing to do. I wonder if we have politicians of that ilk now.

What we do have is a craven Theresa May, a prime minister devoid of principles, propped up by the fundamentalist DUP and the excuse that Stormont is not sitting, as though Westminster could not, if it chose to do so, act on human rights. Women’s rights are human rights or they are meaningless. To do the right thing, May would have to be unplugged from her life support machine, the DUP. So be it.

The joy of the last few days is renewed faith. Things can get better if we fight. Not every vote can be corrupted by outside influence. Young people are not all avatars of selfish, malign identity politics; they are the foot soldiers of civic change. We do not move only toward darkness but toward light. I am in awe of my Irish sisters for showing us how to fight for change. The possibilities are glorious.

Giving Steve Bannon free rein in the name of ‘balance’ is idiotic

It has been obvious for a long time that our media and the BBC in particular does not really know how to deal with the far right. Nigel Farage openly cavorts with fascists, and is ex-leader of a dead party, yet still appears on the BBC regularly. He was indeed given credence by them in the first place.

The other day, Newsnight scored a coup – an interview with the blotchy, two-shirted prince of darkness himself, Steve Bannon. Since being fired by Donald Trump, Bannon has toured Europe stirring up racial hatred, telling Marine Le Pen to wear accusations of racism with pride, and supporting Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

He was inteviewed by Emily Maitlis, who is usually wonderful, but this interview wasn’t. He used it to say everything he wanted, without much challenge. He asserted that the BBC itself is part of the globalist elite and the dread MSM (mainstream media) that can never tell the truth. In other words, he set up the context of his own interview, dog-whistling to his supporters.

He spoke freely of the Judeo-Christian nature of Europe, which is code for Islamophobia. He was not made to explain Orban’s open antisemitism. He claimed Martin Luther King would be proud of him, with no mention of Black Lives Matter or the fact that Trump’s reign has basically allowed the Ku Klux Klan to take their hoods off.

Everything was about national populism versus the MSM and the BBC seemed unable to challenge this steamrollering narrative.

We see the US journalists around Trump already defeated by this reverential approach, the attempt at balance. In the UK, too, the far right has its outriders in “respectable” magazines such as the Spectator, where James Delingpole describes the former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson as a bit of a geezer while Rod Liddle queries his latest arrest.

The rationalising of hate speech in the name of “balance” is idiotic and dangerous.

The Duchess of Sussex is in a tight spot

Getting dressed in this weather is such a faff. It’s summer, then it isn’t. It is opaques, then it is bare white legs with a bit of whatever you can find slapped on them. If your skin is already dark or golden, you don’t need to worry so much.

The image of the Duchess of Sussex, social justice warrior and all-round new broom, in some weird light tights on a very hot day upset me. Flesh-coloured tights are an abomination and these weren’t the colour of her flesh.

Worse, though, it is already a sign of how Meghan can no longer be herself, even in the smallest of ways. She has surrendered to the law of the palace. I fear those terrible tights are just the beginning.