The Liberal Democrats face extinction as a Parliamentary force – unless they can recapture the female vote
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse for the LibDems, one of Britain's best known women's rights campaigners headlines her latest blog 'New Polling Shows Women Dump The LibDems'(www.abdela.blogspot.com)
After the 2% tally by the Liberal Democrats in the recent by-election (parliamentary candidates need 5% to save their £500 deposit), it's hard to believe things could get even worse for the junior Party in the Coalition - but as Lesley Abdela points out in her latest blogspot, current polling by IPSOS shows the Lib Dem vote has haemorrhaged to a mere 11% of voters if the election were held right now. What's particularly threatening to the Liberal Democrats is the gender gap - 12% men and a mere 10% women. (July 6 YouGov Poll gives the LibDems only 9%)
If women voters have permanently dumped the Liberal Democrats, extinction as a Parliamentary force is inevitable. Back in April 2010, just ahead of the general election, 32% of the public said they would vote LibDem. Of this, 28% were men but an astonishing 36% were women, an unprecedented 8% gender gap between the sexes.
The dramatic loss of women's support could be disastrous for the Party's survival as a Parliamentary force. Through the dark years from 1945 to the 1980s, the Liberal Party was kept afloat (just) by the fidelity of women voters. The IPSOS poll shows that is no longer the case.
The heavy imbalance of men to women in the LibDem Parliamentary Party, approaching 10 to 1, could get even worse. Recently the Fabian Society predicted the LibDems could end up with no women MPs at all after the next election. The Party already has the lowest ratio of women to men in Parliament of any Liberal Party in the democratic world.
Lesley Abdela points out it has been a long-term failure by successive Liberal-Democrat leaderships - truly one of the longest suicides in political history - to attend to the unacceptable imbalance within the Party of men in leadership positions and women mostly in support. This composition is not attractive to an electorate in which 54% of those who go to the polls and vote are female - and only 46% male.
The history of legislation shows it was not until 20th Century heroes like Jo Richardson fought for a place in Parliament and then fought for the Equal Pay acts did legislation begin to consider the
needs and wishes of the majority sex.
Lesley Abdela points out not one woman was seated at the negotiating table when the Coalition was being hammered out 'for the future of the United Kingdom'. She believes the absence of women's input led directly to the fact the impending cuts will - as the Fawcett Society has pointed out - impact more savagely on women compared to men at the rate of 72% to 28% . It may well be UK women are already taking their revenge on the junior Coalition partner.
Lesley Abdela founded the all-Party 300 Group for women in Politics back in 1980. In addition to her specialism in post-conflict reconstruction she travels worldwide advising women's campaign groups and political Parties.