Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow? If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow?
If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Here are 15 reasons why women (and men who believe in equality of the sexes) should sooner drink poison than vote for the Kippers tomorrow.
1. Nigel Farage on women: “Godfrey’s [Bloom, former UKIP MEP] comment that ‘no employer with a brain in the right place would employ a young, single, free woman‘ has been proved so right. With this lunacy, that if you have children you get three months paid leave off work, or six months paid leave off work – he absolutely got it spot on.”
2. UKIP want to scrap paid maternity leave (in line with Lesotho, Swaziland, the US and Papua New Guinea).
3. UKIP want to make it legal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender (as well as race).
4. This would also entail the scrapping of employment regulations against sexual harassment and safeguards for part time and irregular workers, the majority of which are women.
5. Nigel Farage informed City high flyers that they are “worth less” to employers if they become mothers or that motherhood is a lifestyle choice.
6. Patrick O’Flynn, MEP Candidate, also say that pregnant women in the workplace are a “disaster”.
7. UKIP’s MEPs have consistently failed to represent the interests of women. They have voted against or simply not turned up to key votes in the European Parliament on ensuring equal pay, combating violence against women and ruling out FGM, to name but a few.
8. Since the 2009 European Election UKIP’s only two female MEPs, Nikki Sinclaire and Marta Andreasen, have both left the party. Andreason said Farage “doesn’t try to involve intelligent professional women in positions of responsibility in the party. He thinks women should be in the kitchen or in the bedroom”. Nikki Sinclaire won an Employment Tribunal claim for sex discrimination against the party.
9. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP and candidate in the Newark by-election, said, “Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.”
10. Godfrey Bloom, a former UKIP MEP, was not reprimanded for hugely sexist statements such as, “[feminists are] shrill, bored, middle-class women of a certain physical genre” and, “Women, in spite of years of training in art and music – and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries – have produced few great works”
11. Stuart Wheeler, the party’s treasurer, said that women were “absolutely nowhere” when they compete with men in sports where they are not physically disadvantaged. He said, “I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women or a particular number on a board… Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage.”
12. In November 2013, UKIP MEP, Stuart Agnew said (in a debate on women in the boardroom) that “Women don’t have the ambition to get to the top, something gets in the way. It’s called a baby… Those females who really want to get to the top do so”.
13. David Chalice , a senior party official in Exeter, has voiced his belief that women should stay at home and that “cash-strapped Moslems” should have multiple wives.
14. Demetri Marchessini, the party’s sixth-largest individual donor in 2013, said there was no such thing as marital rape, arguing: “If you make love on Friday and make love Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape.” He also claimed women should be banned from wearing trousers because they “discourage love-making”.
15. Need I go on?
Want to read more post like this? Then *sign-up to Look Left* and make sure you have the facts to rebut right-wing spin
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
512 Responses to “15 reasons women shouldn’t vote for UKIP”
Robin
You seem to be suggesting that UKIP and Tory MP’s and leaders (?) with money and possessions have never suffered misery? Quite an arrogant statement really. David Cameron suffered the loss of his son Ivan, I can think of no greater misery than that. I’m sure the others you mentioned have suffered at some time in their lives too. And if all the MP’s were put on minimum wage then of course everything would change, because there wouldn’t be any MP’s. We’re talking 650 MP’s out of a population of 63 million people. If you think you can do better then stand for Parliament. Your further statements are as inaccurate as your apparent lack of facts. Do you know that Britain rules the world in technology, it is our biggest export! Everything we buy has not come from cheap labour as you call it either. A large proportion comes from the EU. I hardly think that the trouble in countries making cheap goods is our fault. Not everyone buys cheap because if you buy cheap you usually buy twice. It’s something some people need to learn. I bought two pairs of shoes 20 years ago, an expensive pair and a pair about half as much. I still have the expensive pair, the cheaper pair lasted about 5 years. Pound for pound the expensive pair have worked out cheaper in the long run. It annoys me when I hear of people pleading poverty when they smoke, go to a pub or a night club every week, run a car on ‘fun’ trips, pay extortionate amounts for TV contracts and for entrance to football matches. That isn’t poverty, poverty is not being able to afford fresh water, clean clothing and decent living conditions. So stop trying to sound impoverished, you are amongst the worlds top 15% of well off human beings just living in England. I have no objection to immigrants coming from impoverished countries so long as their intention is to return to them and improve their own infrastructure when they’ve learnt how we manage ours. The only real problem we face is the ever increasing quest for power and control we face from the new line of politicians we have created and supported over the last 50 years. They have helped to eradicate true democracy and the creation of UKIP will, hopefully, slowly break the rotating dictatorship we have endured between the Tory’s and Labour!
Robin
I see a modicum of punctuation in David Armitages reply Elizabeth. The only thing he seems to suffer from is a lack of eloquence and spelling accuracy. I assume that you mean illiterate and ignorant voters rather than political parties, I rather think they have a great deal of educational skills, their problem seems to be in using them intelligently, but that doesn’t make them illiterate. As for the voting public in general, I would agree that illiteracy and ignorance is prevalent amongst a high proportion of them. However, I don’t think that illiteracy has much bearing on the outcome of a general election, nearly everyone can write X in a box. As for their ignorance, well there you may have a point, ignorance is born out of a lack of knowledge and people who don’t bother informing themselves fully of a political parties policies may indeed vote with ignorance.
Windymac
You people really don’t mind just making things up do you? I hope you’re being well paid to sell your soul like this.
Windymac
One issue party? What babble is this?
Windymac
Brilliant. When out of your depth mark the grammar. You have one too many commas in there, genius.