Labour Isn't Working - For Women
Harriet believes that a man with a penis can self-identify and declare he has magically become female.
So how can this Labour grandee stand up for women's rights to single sex spaces - for dignity and privacy at work or in women's sport, for example?
It's the most absurd nonsense.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/14/could-there-be-a-worse-envoy-for-girls-than-harriet-harman/
Could there be a worse ‘envoy for girls’ than Harriet Harman?
The Labour grandee has waltzed into another publicly funded non-job.
By Julie Burchill - Spiked-Online
There aren’t many mornings recently when one doesn’t turn on the radio news and wonder: ‘Am I in the Land Of Upside Down or in Topsy-Turvy World today?’ But I must say that hearing, on International Women’s Day, the mad tidings that Harriet Harman has been made ‘UK special envoy for women and girls’ quite took the Jammy Dodger.
To quote from Gov.UK, this appointment apparently ‘underlines the UK’s ongoing commitment to empowering women and girls around the world’, while Harman’s ‘new role will help champion gender equality worldwide and help deliver global economic growth as part of the UK government’s Plan for Change’.
That’s a relief. For a moment, I was concerned that Harman’s new role might be an enthusiastic contribution to the continued oppression of women worldwide. After all, she has a terrible track record when it comes to the oppressed and the victimised. In the 1970s, a civil-liberties campaign group where she worked as a legal officer allowed the Paedophile Information Exchange (the clue’s in the name) to become an ‘affiliate member’.
Like all Labour women, Harman is trapped in a party that, having signed up to the brotherhood of man, seems quite happy to ride roughshod over its sisters. Labour forever promises them jam tomorrow, so long as they themselves pick the fruit, boil the berries and write the labels.
In her 2017 autobiography, A Woman’s Work, Harman presents the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), where she toiled for a long time as its legal officer, as being unreservedly a ‘thorn in the side of government’, forever fighting for the rights of the little man.
That’s a relief. For a moment, I was concerned that Harman’s new role might be an enthusiastic contribution to the continued oppression of women worldwide. After all, she has a terrible track record when it comes to the oppressed and the victimised. In the 1970s, a civil-liberties campaign group where she worked as a legal officer allowed the Paedophile Information Exchange (the clue’s in the name) to become an ‘affiliate member’.
More recently, there are her addlepated pronouncements that transwomen are women. Both issues involve perverted men’s desire to put their penises where they most definitely should not be.
Perhaps you need to be as privileged as Harman (born in Harley Street, expensively educated at St Paul’s, related to Longfords and Chamberlains) to not understand what an actual underdog looks like, as opposed to a special-pleading narcissist.
Perhaps you need to be as privileged as Harman (born in Harley Street, expensively educated at St Paul’s, related to Longfords and Chamberlains) to not understand what an actual underdog looks like, as opposed to a special-pleading narcissist.
Harman is a political Transmaid, one of those women, mostly in the Labour ranks, who acts in a servile manner towards men, like a handmaid, but only if that man wears a frock. This sucking up to men invariably means abandoning the most powerless women in our society. Harman and her simpering, sell-out Cisters are never going to find themselves locked up in jail with a rapist called Rosalind, that’s for sure.
Like Diane Abbott, Harman is one of those allegedly thoughtful, supposedly serious-minded Labour women who seems to come alive when saying daft, thoughtless things. Think of Abbott’s 1996 letter to a newspaper complaining about 20 Finnish nurses being recruited to a Hackney hospital in her constituency, thundering that those ‘blonde, blue-eyed girls from Finland’ do not ‘understand British culture and institutions’.
Like Diane Abbott, Harman is one of those allegedly thoughtful, supposedly serious-minded Labour women who seems to come alive when saying daft, thoughtless things. Think of Abbott’s 1996 letter to a newspaper complaining about 20 Finnish nurses being recruited to a Hackney hospital in her constituency, thundering that those ‘blonde, blue-eyed girls from Finland’ do not ‘understand British culture and institutions’.
Similarly, with all the torture and indignities the female sex has suffered every single day since time immemorial, Harman somehow managed to find the time to demand that: ‘Of course there should be a female Doctor Who but what we need is a man as her assistant. She has got to just tell him what to do. He will need that leadership.’
Did she note the exquisite, cloth-eared irony of her words, one wonders? This was in 2017, and Labour still remains the only major political party in the UK never to have had a woman leader. Although Harman probably considers the giddy heights of when she was allowed to be ‘caretaker’ Labour leader for a few months, after Ed Miliband was dumped, to be as good as the real thing. That’s what women are there for – eh, Haz? To help out the men when they’re short-handed!
Did she note the exquisite, cloth-eared irony of her words, one wonders? This was in 2017, and Labour still remains the only major political party in the UK never to have had a woman leader. Although Harman probably considers the giddy heights of when she was allowed to be ‘caretaker’ Labour leader for a few months, after Ed Miliband was dumped, to be as good as the real thing. That’s what women are there for – eh, Haz? To help out the men when they’re short-handed!
Like all Labour women, Harman is trapped in a party that, having signed up to the brotherhood of man, seems quite happy to ride roughshod over its sisters. Labour forever promises them jam tomorrow, so long as they themselves pick the fruit, boil the berries and write the labels.
In her 2017 autobiography, A Woman’s Work, Harman presents the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), where she toiled for a long time as its legal officer, as being unreservedly a ‘thorn in the side of government’, forever fighting for the rights of the little man.
She doesn’t see fit to mention that it also granted formal affiliate status to the aforementioned Paedophile Information Exchange (aka PIE). This was a time when this lobby group was suggesting that the age of consent be lowered to 10. In 2014, while Harman expressed ‘regret’ that ‘this vile organisation, PIE, had ever existed and that it ever had anything to do with NCCL’, she also insisted she had ‘nothing to apologise for’.
Nor does Harman mention in her book that, during her time at the NCCL, she allegedly ‘suggested that a pornographic photo or film of a child should not be considered indecent unless it could be shown that the subject had suffered’, according to a report in the Telegraph.
Her colleague, Patricia Hewitt, general secretary of the NCCL from 1974 to 1983, at least had the belated decency to say in 2014 that she ‘got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so’. ‘I should have urged the executive committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL’s integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so’, Hewitt said.
Still, maybe it’s in the nature of the Great and the Good not to admit to anything that might reveal them as the entitled, woolly minded mediocrities they are. Any hint of self-doubt and the ceaseless string of well-paid, public-purse-funded placeholder positions might dry up.
Which brings us back to Harman’s shiny new role – a role she seems almost farcically unfit for. Not long before she was handed the envoy job, she was granted a peerage. She also chairs the feminist Fawcett Society.
Nor does Harman mention in her book that, during her time at the NCCL, she allegedly ‘suggested that a pornographic photo or film of a child should not be considered indecent unless it could be shown that the subject had suffered’, according to a report in the Telegraph.
Her colleague, Patricia Hewitt, general secretary of the NCCL from 1974 to 1983, at least had the belated decency to say in 2014 that she ‘got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so’. ‘I should have urged the executive committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL’s integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so’, Hewitt said.
Still, maybe it’s in the nature of the Great and the Good not to admit to anything that might reveal them as the entitled, woolly minded mediocrities they are. Any hint of self-doubt and the ceaseless string of well-paid, public-purse-funded placeholder positions might dry up.
Which brings us back to Harman’s shiny new role – a role she seems almost farcically unfit for. Not long before she was handed the envoy job, she was granted a peerage. She also chairs the feminist Fawcett Society.
Why does she keep getting these roles? We think of velocity as something propelled by dynamism, but in a dog-day democracy like ours, it can equally be driven by what the brilliant Joseph Heller described as ‘crusading inertia’.
At the start of this year, the son of Harman, Joe Dromey, became head honcho of the Fabian Society, a Labour-affiliated pressure group, proving that crusading inertia is safe for another generation in the demos-despising People’s Party. Doesn’t that give you a lovely warm feeling of nepo-continuity?
As for Harman herself, with her approach to PIE in the past and autogynephiles in the present, she is living proof of how the silly and the sinister can often go hand in hand, even in a well-spoken and apparently inoffensive human being.
Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published by Academica Press.
At the start of this year, the son of Harman, Joe Dromey, became head honcho of the Fabian Society, a Labour-affiliated pressure group, proving that crusading inertia is safe for another generation in the demos-despising People’s Party. Doesn’t that give you a lovely warm feeling of nepo-continuity?
As for Harman herself, with her approach to PIE in the past and autogynephiles in the present, she is living proof of how the silly and the sinister can often go hand in hand, even in a well-spoken and apparently inoffensive human being.
Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published by Academica Press.
