I mentioned UK Tory MP Louise Mensch in July applauding her handling of a blackmail attempt. Here’s a profile from The Guardian‘s Decca Aitkenhead Louise Mensch: ‘We’re not all ogres’ which is very interesting for similar reasons, and more…
Interesting to see the full shot which The Guardian evidently cropped to emphasise the 'facelift' angle, huh? Trivialising her, in a way, if you ask me.
We were still swooning at her brio when rioting broke out across Britain and she made headlines again, calling for Facebook and Twitter to be closed down during civil unrest. Many commentators considered the suggestion merely foolish, but computer hackers issued death threats against her and her children, which she promptly posted on Twitter, along with the defiant message: “Get stuffed, losers. I don’t bully easily.” A man has since been arrested. Along the way there was also a change of name, following her wedding to Peter Mensch – manager of Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers – in a ceremony kept so secret, even her own children apparently weren’t told. And now, when we meet, another “secret” emerges, which plainly isn’t going to be a secret any more.
All in all, quite a summer. But Louise Mensch is quite a woman, one of the most formidable I have met in a very long time. Confident, combative, quick on her feet and fiercely intelligent, she also has that irresistibly easy charm that comes from a really expensive education. Her conversational style bears more than a hint of the junior debating champion –”I dispute the premise of your question,” and suchlike – and so conscious is she of her audience that she addresses most of her answers into the Dictaphone on the table between us. But she delivers them in flawless paragraphs of elegantly crafted sentences, with a fluency you seldom come across. Half the time she sounds like an aristocratic Edwardian, yet she can slip into the register of a Radio 1 presenter without sounding the least bit inauthentic. Focus groups love to ask voters, “Which politician would you most like to have a drink with?” and on that test I cannot think of anyone in Westminster who would beat her.
Read the profile and see if you think she’s handling the ‘facelift?’ questions well. I think they’re close to completely irrelevant. But apparently they’re a sore point — see Tory MP ‘hits the roof’ over comparison to model
This, section, too is very good, and sort of reminds me of some of Cathy Odgers’ (Cactus Kate’s) cant, only better expressed.
As part of the selection process she was asked to write an essay entitled: Why Are You A Conservative? Her first sentence was: “Because conservatism delivers liberal ends.” On economic policy, she regards herself to the right: “But I believe you should look at your policies in terms of how they’re going to impact the poorest people first. I fundamentally believe that politics is counterintuitive. The left think they’re helping working people by providing more rights, but all that actually happens is you create poverty and despair, because jobs go to your competitors who have fewer rights for workers. So which is the compassionate policy? I believe Toryism is the compassionate policy.”
On social policy, she places herself squarely on the left. “I am a feminist, I am in favour of gay marriage and totally against the death penalty. I would leave the party if we were to bring in anything remotely resembling it. I can’t emphasise enough how opposed to it I am. It’s barbaric, and it’s a shame on the United States that they still use it. Give me an American politician who’d oppose the death penalty and I’d die in a ditch for him – even if he was a Democrat.”
I read a similar expression of that thought: “because jobs go to your competitors who have fewer rights for workers” in a John A Lee book Political Notebooks over the summer. More on that later.
– P
An interesting take on the movie about a more famous female Tory politician – Mrs T:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-13/iron-lady-falls-to-anna-quindlen-doctrine-commentary-by-virginia-postrel.html
Rgds,
*p*
Thanks for the link to the movie review. I haven’t seen the film but feared it would be a dumbed down, monochromatic affair, and to read about the time distortions and ‘injections of guilt where there was none’ etc just makes it seem like a waste of electrons.
This concluding paragraph is, as you point out, relevant:
– P
Now I know I should not judge a book by its cover and on one policy.
But her slamming the Death penalty in such a anti stance, to me is Game Over. I know there are issues with it, but the fundamentals I agree with. This kind of strong message from her is why this (PC, Bureaucratic, Expensive, Broke, encourage mediocrity, Giving perpetrators to many rights taking the rights away from Victims) World we live in is in the Crapper.
Oh gee. I agree with you that you’re foolish to write off such an impressive person on such a basis. I might (probably do) disagree with Ms Mensch on a number of issues, but ‘Game Over’? Not at all.
I’m certain I’d enjoy spending time in conversation with the by all accounts vivacious Ms Mensch. I loved the honesty of her narrative about how her first reaction to the blackmail attempt was ‘Oh well, easy come easy go’ but then, with her husband, developed the front foot response of publishing the threat in its entirety (coincidentally, that’s the approach I take too).
—
The death penalty is, I grant you, often a defining issue. I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I have severe reservations about its use. I’ve blogged before, I think, of the formative experience of my working at the Supreme Court during one of Arthur Allan Thomas’s unsuccessful appeals against the wrongful double murder convictions obtained by false and planted police evidence. The level of certainty of conviction required for execution is very high, and often unattainable in my view.
The other issue for me is the overwhelming bias in the racial profile of incarcerated citizens and death row inmates.
-P
I completely agree. The false convictions of potential death roll victims is only hurdle from my perspective and as you say almost unattainable, however I don’t believe this is why Ms Mensch is so against it.
I am sure she is a smart cookie far smarter than I, but to be opposed so strongly is a big alarm bell for me. Sorry I switch off. Its think its like Snake Oil salesmen (spruikers) for you other than that awful practice they could be well rounded people, but do you really trust them with anything they say or do?
Louise Mensch called for twitter and facebook to be closed down which is ironic given the amount of time she spends on those sites, years ago MPs would hold surgeries, usually on a saturday morning, reply to letters (remember them?) and actually attend meetings in the constituencies they represented, nowadays they appear on Question time with redundant Punk rockers and go for the ‘I took class A drugs but I’m not saying which ones’ angle (if you didn’t see that episode of QT it really was pitiful, another piece of tradition relegated to the junk culture folder).
Louise Mensch is just a more middle class (trying to be ‘street’, slightly better educated (anyone can get GCSEs these days, if I sat my exams I’d walk out with a masters degree in Latin) albeit not more intelligent representation of what is wrong with this country.
[…] respect both of these women as political animals. They’re both a lot easier on the eye than, say, Margaret Thatcher. They’ve also both, supposedly, retired from politics now […]