insideMAN

Labour secretly hoping eight million men don’t vote

by 6 Comments

The Labour Party has come up with a brilliant wheeze to win this year’s general election by targeting the 17 million people who didn’t vote last time.

Oh no, hang on a minute, scrub that.

The Labour Party has come up with a brilliant wheeze to win this year’s general election by ignoring eight million of the 17 million people who didn’t vote last time…….because they are men.

Harriet Harman (make up your own joke about her surname), said: “There is a general disaffection with politics. You are even less likely as a woman to see politics as the solution to your problems.”

X marks the spot 

The evidence for this completely made-up statement is overwhelming. At the last general election, for example, a whopping 16.2 million men put an X on a bit of paper knowing full well all their problems would be resolved as a result. Meanwhile, only a teeny, tiny number of women (erm, that’s just 16 million) thought there was any point voting at all.

I know, I know, only 49.7% of the 32.2 million people who voted last time were women, but 50.3% were men—-it’s really, Really, REALLY not fair is it?

No wonder Harriet Harman told Good Morning Britain that “politics is much too important to be left to only men voting”—a great example of “this is what left-wing feminist maths looks like”.

Even worse than this, is the fact that a staggering 53.2% of the 17m people who didn’t vote in 2010 are women and Harriet Harman says “the growing trend for people not to vote is worrying for our democracy”.

Vote Farage 

So worrying, in fact, that Labour is going do nothing about the eight million men who didn’t vote because, well men are less likely to vote Labour than women. There’s really no point encouraging men to have a vote because they’ll only do something stupid with it like drive their white van to the polling booth (harassing women on the way) and vote for Nigel Farage or Al Murray

Instead they’re going to focus on the “missing millions”, not the millions of men who aren’t voting but “the missing millions of women who will be the focus of Labour’s campaign”.

But where will Labour find these millions of women (without accidentally alerting their menfolk that there’s an election brewing)? Well Harriet has a cunning plan.

“We will bring politics to the school gate,” she said, because the only men you find at the school gates are paedophiles and they all vote Conservative.

Shopping for votes 

“We will bring politics to the shopping centre,” she added, because women do love buying things, don’t they? Though heaven knows where they get the money from because, you know, gender pay gap.

“We will bring politics to offices and factories,” she continued, but shhh, don’t tell the male workers.

“This election will be a watershed for women in this country,” she concluded, probably because Ed “One Nation” Milliband will wet himself with tears of joy if he wins the election as the leader of a “One Gender” party. And in case we were in any doubt Harriet Harman told journalists that her pink bus was symbolic of Labour’s “One Gender” vision for the UK. “It is the correct colour.” she said, “this the One Nation Labour colour”.

T0 bring home the message that Labour really doesn’t want to attract any more male voters, it also announced that it will be launching a Manifesto for Women—a kind of WOMANifesto if you like (geddit?).

Labour’s WOMANifesto will include the following promises:

  • More free childcare (because men don’t care about children)
  • Support for grandparents who look after their grandchildren (because only grandmothers love their grandkids)
  • Forcing employers to publish their hourly pay gap figures to create equal pay for women (like that time when Dominc Raab MP did an FOI on the Government Equalities Office and found that female staff were paid 8% more than male staff)
  • Doing more to tackle violence against women (because who gives a fuck about violence against men)?

And just when you thought this story couldn’t get any better, Labour unveiled its #WomanToWoman battle bus and just in case you haven’t heard yet—it’s pink! And we all know that men hate the colour pink (except the gay ones of course), because, oh you know, hegemonic masculinity or something.

Genius! That will stop eight million non-voting men from getting all inspired about democracy and voting for one of the other parties that doesn’t prioritise women over men.

But most surprising of all was the way Labour’s “pink is for girls” van nearly made the socially conservative Daily Mail sound like the Everyday Sexism campaign—if only they hadn’t enjoyed the fact the driver of the bus had stalled quite so much—women drivers eh!?

The Mail’s stroke of genius, however, was digging up a quote from Labour MP Chi Onwura who condemned the marketing of “girls’ stuff'”in pink last year, warning:

‘This aggressive gender segregation is a consequence of big company marketing tactics. It has now got to the point where it is difficult to buy toys for girls in particular which are not pink, princess primed or fairy infused. What may be driving big company profit margins is limiting children’s’ choice – and experiences. And ultimately limiting the UK’s social and economic potential and helping maintain the gender pay gap.”

That’s right, if you follow that logic through, using a pink bus to market to women and tell them how you’re going to tackle the “gender pay gap” will actually help maintain the”gender pay gap”, apparently. Someone should tell Harriet Harman.

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

Also on insideMAN: