Cameron must speak out against Canada’s anti-gay marriage ruling

James Hallwood reports on a decision in Canada that could lead to 5000 gay marriages being annulled.

The issue arose when a British-American couple sought divorce in the country in which they were wed as they were unable to do so at home. In the Toronto court case Canada’s Conservative government argued that the lack of recognition in their countries of origin meant that they were never married in the first place, setting a very concerning legal precedent.

While the Netherlands, Spain and others recognise the legality of marriages between foreigners on their soil Canada’s actions have shocked LGBT communities across the globe – not least from those who married there and wake up today unsure of their status.

Given that the Canadian government was happy licensing such marriages at the time this retrospective move seems as hypocritical as it does discriminatory. Can one imagine Canadian law refusing to recognise an interacial marriage because the applicants’ countries of origin wouldn’t?

Canada does not inflict the death penalty on those from countries that use capital punishment, nor does it prevent Saudi women from driving along the roads of Ontario – yet the same correct standard is not applied to gay marriage that, even if not legally recognised in a home nation, should be fully respected by the country that wed them.

There are certainly valid arguments against foreigners relying on Canadian law to adjudicate divorce but deciding that after the marriage is surely too late?

Legal issues aside, the case argued by the Canadian Conservatives must be seen in the context of an administration that has been perceived as increasingly socially conservative. While native Canadians are not affected many activists in Canada fear that this action may be indicitive of their government’s future direction. Little wonder there is outrage from sea to sea.

In the UK the Labour Party achieved a real change in legislation and public attitudes to LGBT rights, a change that the British Conservative frontbench have eventually had to accept. With this on their watch now is the time to ask them to act, to prove that their gay rights credentials aren’t just soundbites for the ‘pink vote’. The British government cannot remain silent on this.

It has been commendable that the coalition has sought to promote gay rights in the ‘developing world’ but it is now imperative that it seeks to defend them in the West.

To that end I am waiting on confirmation of an e-petition that if accepted I implore you to sign; asking the government to condemn this action and seek to affirm the rights of gay British citizens and others to be legally wed in Canada. Update to follow.

The case for LGBT rights in Africa and beyond would be severely undermined if Britain cannot stand up for gay rights in the ‘developed world’.

The hackneyed charge of ‘imperialism’ and ‘interference’ would be dealt a blow by our being seen to challenge any country that infringes the rights of the gay community. This is a message to Canada as much as it is to the world at large. It’s an opportunity that the British government should not miss.

When the shock subsides one realises how important it is to avoid complacency. If this can happen in Canada it can happen anywhere. While I am confident Britain would never go down this route it is a reminder that we must never take our hard won rights for granted.

Labour enshrined LGBT rights into our laws and society, a lesson our Conservatives have had to learn – perhaps if we ask them strongly and often enough they can remind their brethren in Canada of that same important lesson.

James Hallwood is the Young Fabian Equalities Officer.

Government and equality

In this member post, Young Fabian member Kwaku Adjei argues that government should be at the forefront of the equality agenda.

As staunch progressives the word ‘equality’ is not simply a concept we champion arbitrarily. It is an article of faith. For equality is an ideal that should always find expression in every policy proposal the Labour Party puts forward. In order for our policy prescriptions to have the optimum effect there are three elements that our initiatives should guarantee; the elimination of unlawful discrimination; the promotion of social harmony and good relations between all people; and the promotion of equal opportunities. Where equality becomes tricky and politically contentious is when the concept is used to imply all people having approximately the same material wealth. Consequently, the Right has always harboured very pejorative attitudes towards this ideal on the grounds that any attempt to address material inequalities shall inevitably involve state intervention.

However, the issue is not about so-called “big government”, a label often used to discourage policy makers exercising their power in order to make good a wrong. The issue is about fairness and how we use the power of state institutions to enforce fairness in the market place when unscrupulous individuals in business, and in particular financial services, have failed to do so. Those on the Right must acknowledge that over the last few years especially, unfettered free market economies have not favoured families at the middle and lower end of the income scale.

People understand the value of public services. They understand the importance of access to good tuition and good medical treatment because invariably it will be these factors that condition the life chances of every man, woman and child in the country. This is why in healthcare especially, medical provision has in large part been the preserve of the state.

Those nations with more expansive public sectors, notably the Scandinavian countries, fair better than the Anglo-Saxon economies in Britain and the US in terms of managing wealth disparities. Britain remains a country where the top twenty percent earn seven and a half times as much as the bottom twenty percent; and the wealthiest seven percent own fifty percent of the nation’s assets. Reversing these trends cannot always be achieved simply by throwing money at the problem.

However the Coalition is significantly misguided if it believes that solutions can be found in the absence of the state. Yet this is the trajectory ministers are following as they legislate for smaller welfare provision. As the welfare retrenchment agenda continues to bite, it is difficult to envision how communities can support individuals or enable equal levels of capability across race, gender or disability if the government is not prepared to lead from the front. Public services afford people from many different backgrounds the opportunity to be fully fledged participants in our democracy. The current government’s insistence on smaller government shall only marginalise some groups and engender greater social discord. Life is then reduced to the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This is clearly the case in higher education where those with insufficient financial resources cannot afford a university place.

Even during periods of high national debt, the “big government” label should not throw progressives of course when attempting to answer questions around poverty, social mobility and general economic inequality. Government must always serve to empower. This means finding ways to make material wealth matter less.

Kwaku Adjei is a member of the Young Fabians.

Labour Women’s Conference – what women want

The Labour Women’s Conference in Liverpool today is its own justification. Numerous people over the past few weeks, within the opposition and media, and disappointingly within the Labour Party itself, have queried the need for a separate women’s event. If women want to be mainstreamed, isn’t the best way to do that to make their views heard within the framework of the mainstream party conference?

But the discussions today have amply demonstrated the need for a dedicated space for women in the Labour movement to discuss the serious issues facing us in Britain today. This is more necessary than ever during the current cuts, with women suffering disproportionately as both public service users and as public sector workers.

Yvette Cooper in her rousing keynote speech, and Fiona Mctaggart and others in the subsequent panels, highlighted just how badly women are doing under the Coalition government, and how the gains made through the hard work of women in the Labour movement over the past 60 years are being threatened and undone across the board.

As Angela Eagle MP put it “this government has a problem with women.” Well, we have a problem with this government.

Hard-won rights and services are being undone by a government that has just four women in its Cabinet, and that – as a recent leaked memo revealed – canvassed women’s opinions not through serious consultation and representation but by rounding up the few women in Number 10 for a brainstorm of ‘what women want’.

If we’d been asked we could have easily told the Coalition.

What women want is the ability to work and raise a family, or to do just one of these, without being vilified or disadvantaged.  What women want is the right not to be raped, stalked or harassed at work and to be able to prosecute successfully if they are. What women want is fair representation in public life.

And what we need is the support and encouragement of the Party- and the right to self-organise in women forums and yes, at Labour Women Conferences – until such a time as what we want becomes a reality.

Claire Leigh is Treasurer of the Young Fabians

Why Labour should take Gok Wan more seriously

Hear me out. At the weekend I bought some new shirts, but suffer from the problem that my neck is too large for my body. Or at least, the way the shirts are cut means that by getting a shirt with the right collar size, I end up with shirts that make me look like I’m about to set sail. Even opting for ‘slim’ or ‘tailored’ fit doesn’t completely address the issue, and it costs me more.

In this sense, I am victim of poor fortune – being born with a large neck means I have to pay more than others to look as good in shirts. If only shirt manufacturers didn’t seem to assume that men with big necks are also fat!

This got me thinking. Perhaps Labour needs to take the philosophy of Gok Wan a bit more seriously?

In Gok’s Fashion Fix, Gok demonstrates that it is possible to look like you’re wearing designer fashion but on a high street budget. In essence Gok is a fashion egalitarian who thinks your budget shouldn’t affect your ability to look good.

There are at least two reasons why Labour should take that sentiment more seriously.

Firstly, academic research suggests a link between career prospects and appearance* (for example, here or here). So wealth is partly a function of how you look. If people with bad luck have to invest more to look at least the same as people with good luck, then this might compound income inequality**. If Labour is serious about tackling the causes of income inequality, then it might develop policies to ensure looking good is more affordable. Fashion advisers to those on unemployment benefits, for example? Or propose legislating to prohibit discrimination on sartorial grounds?

Secondly, if there is a link between career prospects and appearance, then maybe there is an argument to focus more on how Labour politicians, prospective politicians and party workers dress? Investment in the personal appearance of ‘Party people’ (for want of a better phrase) may yield electoral benefits. I’ll leave it as an open question as to how much investment might be needed…

So there could be two tangible benefits if Labour took Gok Wan more seriously: it may help reverse income inequality resulting from bad luck (odd body shapes etc) and deliver better electoral outcomes.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

*Although note that sometimes changing your appearance can have negative impacts too.

**In the narrow sense of my shirt example this might not strictly hold – fat people, even if shirts fit them better, may experience slower career progression than those who are slimmer (other things equal).

Radical welfare reform?

In this member post, Young Fabian member Timothee Vlandas dissects Cameron’s claim that proposed changes to the welfare system are “radical”.

“The most ambitious, fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system”

With these words Cameron described the recent proposals by the Liberal-Conservative coalition to reform the welfare state. The changes have been widely criticised because of their potential impact on current recipients. While disagreements are likely over what ought to be the standard of living of people not in work and how much their choices are to blame for their situation, it is less contentious that children should, by and large, be spared from these debates.

One way to assess whether they are likely to be is to look at the probable impact of welfare changes on child poverty rates. But before looking at the possible evolution of poverty rates, it’s worth having a quick look at the long term picture.

Child poverty rates were between 10 and 15% during the 60s and early 70s. Thatcher once said: ” Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.” On 4 May 1979, Thatcher became Prime Minister, a post she would hold until 1990, while overseeing a rise to nearly 30% of the child poverty rate during that time.

When Major stepped down and Blair took over in 1997, it was around 25%. Blair arguably managed to bring it down slightly above 20%, hardly a huge change, though one should take into account that this occurred in the context of rising median incomes, and hence higher poverty thresholds.

With this brief historical perspective in mind, let’s now turn to the question of the likely impact of the coalition’s tax and benefit reforms on child poverty rates. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies Briefing Note looks at these issues. The estimated impact, as summarised in the IFS note, is to reduce poverty for working age people without children while increasing by about 100,000 poverty for those with children.

While not as detrimental as one could have feared, it is hard to see anything ambitious in such a forecast. In fact, what makes these proposals to further retrench the welfare state so absurd is that it is already so limited in comparative terms. The child poverty rates is just the more extreme manifestation of the deficiencies of the British welfare state.

The UK has one of lowest net replacement rates of unemployment benefits in the EU15. With only 54% of previous net earnings replaced by unemployment benefits in 2004. Only Ireland had a lower replacement rate. The average duration of its unemployment insurance was only 6 months, the lowest in the EU15 together with Italy (OECD).

This is made worse by the lowest employment protection legislation in Europe. Against this backdrop, very little is spent on active labour market programs such as training schemes to help the unemployed get back into jobs.

Overall, an excessive welfare state is therefore not the problem. In 2007, the UK spent 20.5% of its GDP on public social expenditures, behind most other European countries: Germany (25.2%), France (28.4%), Italy (24.9%), Austria (26.4%), and Belgium (26.3%). By the mid-2000s, only Italy and Portugal had higher inequality after taxes and transfers (OECD).

A truly ambitious reform of the welfare state would address the shocking level of child poverty and provide the basis for a fully developed social insurance system.

• Timothy blogs at euwelfarestates.blogspot.com.

Why hasn’t Cameron apologised yet?

In this member post, Young Fabian member Lola Okolosie takes the Prime Minister to task for his ‘calm down, dear’ comment.

On the same day in which a conservative councillor, Payam Tamiz, was kicked out of the Tory party for calling the women of Thanet “sluts”, the Prime Minister himself made sexist comments during Prime Minister’s Question Time. And it appears Cameron got away with dismissing Angela Eagle, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, with the offensive rebuttal ‘calm down, dear’. The media’s excuse for not taking more time over Cameron’s quite blatant sexism will be that the Royal Wedding was prominent on all minds.

There is no denying that Angela Eagle was not the only MP taking umbrage with Cameron during PMQs last week, yet she was the only one he thought to single out. Even more alarming was his patronising reliance on gender.

Cameron should have done the right thing and apologised for his comments. He has not.

Instead he has gone on the offensive and claimed “socialists have no sense of humour”. To apologise would be to admit that his comments were sexist, offensive and plain wrong.

I smell a double standard here.

I wonder if Angela Eagle should write directly to Theresa May, the Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality (obviously her first job doesn’t have a wide enough remit and there are no other women in the Conservative party that can dedicate the time and attention she can to the second position), about the treatment of women in politics? I wonder too, how Samantha Cameron, as a ‘British business executive’, would react if she was told to ‘calm down dear’? And why is any challenge to such obvious sexism in the Conservative Party dismissed as ‘political correctness gone mad’?

The cover of this quarter’s Fabian Society publication, Fabian Review, has a number of startling statistics that clearly show how we must vocally challenge the still marginalised position women hold in our politics and society:

• since 1918, 4719 men have been elected to the House of Commons, as opposed to 355 women in the same time frame;
• in 2010 267 constituencies had all men candidates, the same figure for women is just 11;
• only 14% of local authority leaders are women, 86% of them are men;
• the percentage of female MPs in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party is 32%, 16% and 12% respectively.

We are nowhere near equal representation.

So how can women – feminist or not – sit back and not be completely furious at the patronising treatment of one of the few female MPs in the House of Commons? It is disingenuous to suggest that this ‘throw-away’ comment was not meant to offend. It is such an obvious example of the undermining of women and just the same as that heard by women up and down the country, who, when articulating their disagreement in the workplace or the home, are just dismissed by the notion that they are taking it all too seriously. They can’t, the argument goes, by virtue of being female, grasp the real dynamics of the given situation because their female hormones make them blow things out of all proportion.

In comparison, Gordon Brown’s ‘that bigoted woman’ incident resulted in more of a sustained media storm. In the media’s eyes Cameron’s casual sexism is not comparable to Brown’s off-mic faux pas. It would seem that there are far more people worried about EU migrants than there are women in this country.

Particularly in light of Tamiz’s comments and subsequent dismissal, you might expect the Conservatives to be a little more sensitive to gender equality issues. But this is the party that is comfortable with seeing women lose £8.80 a week as a result of the Budget cuts while men will only forgo £4.20. And it is the same party that seems unaware of the fact that women make up 90% of the group most affected by the cuts: single parents.

The reality is that casually sexist comments like this one often reflect an ingrained attitude that is in some ways more sinister – that ‘political correctness’ is a terrible thing and is stopping us from saying what we really want. In truth, we should always, especially the Prime Minister, be conscious of the power of language and what it is there to do: to communicate our thoughts and feelings.

To somehow claim that the comment wasn’t sexist is, in my eyes, unforgivable. This is yet another example of how the existence of these deeply embedded and disempowering attitudes is denied.

The Gender Agenda

In her first column for the Young Fabian Blog, Young Fabian Member and Membership Ambassador Anna Bage juxtaposes the coverage of Kate Middleton in recent weeks with the (lack of) coverage of women in politics.

It’s safe to say that in recent weeks Britain has been struck by Royal wedding fever. The engagement and wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton has dominated the news of late, with the UK in manic preparation for last Friday’s event.

Kate Middleton has received a huge amount of media attention, from interest in her wedding dress to how she’ll perform as Prince William’s wife. As a woman, watching Kate Middleton dominate the newspaper headlines has been bittersweet. Whilst it’s brilliant to see a woman on front page news being celebrated, the reason for the extensive coverage is less about applauding her capabilities and achievements, but more about her changing weight, her fashion sense, and of course, her appearance on the big day.

And although Kate enjoyed a successful three years at a red brick University, she now declines her right to vote by marrying into the Royal family – a right that was fought hard for by previous generations of women. In addition, she almost certainly forgoes a conventional career in which she might use the skills and knowledge attained via her degree.

With their focus elsewhere, the metropolitan media have missed the really big female story of the last few week. The Fabian Review study on gender inequality, both inside and outside of the houses of parliament.

Now, while I wouldn’t pretend that the ongoing lack of female presence in politics would sell as many headlines as the speculation over whether Kate Middleton would be wearing cream or ivory at the Royal wedding, it does highlight an important point. In a society that seems to venerate the status of the celebrity, what chance of intellectual exposure do the admirable qualities of our hard working Labour women stand? Not for them the front page news, endless headlines and photo opportunities. In fact, in the recent Fabian Review, the focus on gender equality, on feminism, and on highlighting the ever present lack of women in the Houses of Parliament showed that we have a long way to go.

It’s not that women aren’t as interested in politics as men, as accomplished women already show. Maybe it is rather that the political environment is not conducive to fostering fledging female ambitions.

In my work as a membership ambassador for the Young Fabians, I have come across young women who are passionate and enthusiastic about politics; women who are hard working, dedicated, and who want to get involved, but quite simply lack the confidence to do so. The Labour party need to both recognise and then realise the untapped potential that so many of these women hold. If this potential is to be harnessed for the future of both our party and our country, they need to be nurtured and supported for their future roles, just like Kate has for hers. Young women must realise and be shown that they have the support of their party behind them.

The Labour Party needs to do more to provide environments in which women can comfortably express their ideas and opinions, and can be guided through the workings of public life, and of the political environment. If we are to tackle the problem of under-representation in the houses of parliament, we must first surely energise women interested in politics by providing them with a strong and secure platform from which they can grow. And we should highlight Labour successes, such as Susan Nash and Luciana Berger, who are proving that being both political and female can be a perfect match.

For any union to be successful there needs to be a strong and caring framework on which it can rely. As Kate enters the cloisters of the Royal family, let’s hope that one day the Labour party can find renewed energy to work on providing a safe and supporting sanctuary for its young women.

That really could distinguish Labour from a party led by a man who, in the same week as Royalty crowned the media, thought it might be amusing to tell an elected representative of the people to ‘calm down dear, calm down…’

I wonder what Kate thought of that?

Put money where your mouth is, Mr Mitchell

In this Member Post, Lola Okolosie, writes about the challenges which remain for the gender equality agenda, despite the launch of UN Women.

UN Women. Never heard of it? Well, that is not altogether a surprise. News of its launch was lost amidst coverage of the North African political uprisings. In the month in which we celebrate 100 years of International Woman’s Day, it seems apt, then, to remind people of this little known organization.

Set up to ‘champion’ equality for women on the global stage, its remit encompasses tackling violence against women; advocating for female involvement in politics and making the economic argument for women’s equality. In the Asia Pacific region alone, it is estimated $40 billion is lost each year as a result of women’s limited access to employment. These statistics remind us of the urgency with which the issues linked to gender equality, in an age of ever increasing globalization, are a serious concern for all.

UN Women replaces four smaller organizations, themselves hindered by poor funding. A lack of adequate financial support threatens to render this new body as ineffectual as its predecessors. Only a handful of the UN’s member nations have made core-funding commitments, both the UK and US governments remain conspicuous in their absence. Such inaction threatens to make the organization and its director, Michelle Bachelet, toothless lions, merely existing as representational mascots to gender equality.

In July 2010 International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, supported the setting up of the organization. Indeed, he was “relishing the opportunity to work with the single powerful agency which will have responsibility for promoting the rights of women across the world, and ensuring gender equality.” He qualified this by urging ‘UN [Women] to get started with delivering real change on the ground quickly.’

The question is, how can this be done when it faces a funding shortfall of £312 million?

Kathy Peach, Head of External Affairs at VSO UK welcomes Mitchell’s enthusiasm. However, for many gender equality campaigners, empty support is not enough. Peach argues that “it is now time for the Government to put funding behind its words and commit a minimum of £21 million in core annual funding to UN Women so it can start to deliver real change for millions of women.”

Over 400 events were held to mark the centenary of International Women’s Day and to celebrate what has been achieved in that time. The congratulatory tones of the last week must not lead us to forget one key fact: we are still a long way from winning the battle for women’s equality.

It’s time to put money where your mouth is, Mr Mitchell.

Listen to a podcast of a Young Fabian Women/One World Action joint panel discussion on UN Women by clicking here.

The same, but different

The ECJ ruling that insurance companies cannot charge different premiums for men and women is lunacy.

According to the ECJ:

Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination.

This is a rather absolutist view of gender equality, and ignores an important point: that gender differences may be the proximate cause of differences in observed outcomes, such as the ability to keep a car on the road.

Behavioural studies, as well as observed claim data available to actuaries who calculate insurance premiums, show that the risk of having a serious accident, and therefore having a large claim against insurance, is lower for females. (Other studies show that female drivers may be involved in more ‘low-claim’ accidents, and that over-75s are the riskiest group to insure). Essentially, the gender of driver is a reliable component in assessing the probability that a driver will claim against their car insurance.

The consequences of forcing insurance companies to ignore risk factors which may contribute towards the variance in the expected pay-out for a given individual is that some consumers are likely to overpay for cover – in the case of car-insurance, this is likely to be women who will be charged higher premiums.

Put another way, the link between the fundamental cost of the service and the price charged to some consumers will be distorted to the detriment of those consumers. Worse still, female drivers may now subsidise the cost of insuring more risky men.

Isn’t that a form of discrimination?

And where does the ruling end? Will insurance companies be banned from basing contracts on a person’s age? Or levying a higher price because someone is bad at driving – isn’t that discrimination?

A grown-up view of gender equality will recognise that there are some situations where acknowledging differences in gender is potentially important and desirable. The ECJ’s efforts would be better spent sorting out those situations where it is not.

Alex Baker is the Secretary of the Young Fabians.

Why I, for one, am glad Andy Gray spoke out against women in football

Right, bear with me. The attacking options with respect to ex-Sky Sports Presenter Andy Gray are more numerous than those confronting Wayne Rooney in a one-on-one situation.

Yes, Gray’s comments were misjudged; yes, his comments were demeaning to women; yes, his comments were boorishly puerile even by the standards of pre-schoolers. But it is not all bad: just look at how men have rallied to the cause following his comments. It is enough to make me proud of my biology.

I think Gray’s words have had a wonderfully galvanising effect on male football fans the length and breadth of the country. The maelstrom that has cost Gray and his co-presenter, Richard Keys, the dumb and dumber of sports broadcasting, their jobs has shown their pre-historic views have no place in modern football. With old, sexist attitudes previously bubbling away on a low simmer, this was the prod the game needed to make its menfolk sit up and say: you know what? It isn’t the 1950s anymore.

Sue Mott described this week in the Daily Express how twenty years ago she asked Ron Atkinson, then managing Sheffield Wednesday, for his views on women in football. This is not the kind of question Big Ron is well-equipped to answer; his reply: “a women’s place is in the kitchen, bedroom and the disco”.

Fast forward twenty years to the comments Gray and Keys made which started the train of events that led to their dismissals from their cushy £1 million-a-year jobs. Following an extremely well judged offside call in a Liverpool match, Gray said this of the lineswomen in question, Sian Massey:

“Can you believe that? A female lineman! Women don’t know the offside rule.”

Keys, rolling over and having his tummy tickled, added “Course they don’t. The game’s gone mad.”

Now that the pair have some extra time (boom, boom) on their hands, I think I’ll invite them down to watch my Sunday league team. If they think Sian Massey’s adroitly judged line call was “mad”, I would love to see what they make of the regularly egregious decisions made by our (male) referees.

Only last weekend, I played the line beautiful only to be wrongly (a view I shared alone at the time) flagged offside. I felt I had been cruelly wronged. The truth is Sian Massey, a highly trained and qualified lineswomen, made a wonderfully skilled offside call which the vast majority of the people in the stadium at the time got wrong. For Keys and Gray to denounce that as “mad” is, well, mad.

Other female sports broadcasters have reported similarly depressing tales this week. National institution, Gabby Logan, described in the Times how she was instructed to “have a baby” when she told her bosses that the shows she was being given were not stretching her.

Perhaps the lowlight was an embarrassing scene that once confronted Jacqueline Magnay. On interviewing the president of a rugby league club after a match she explained how:

“one played jumped up on a table stark naked and swung his hips to the cheers of his teammates”.

This, admittedly, was in Australia and not chilly England but one can only hope, for the player’s sake, that this incident did not happen during the winter season.

Women in sports broadcasting, as in all other forms of work, should be judged by the quality of their output and the skills they bring to the table. Sian Massey did brilliantly. She should not be subjected to such sexist nonsense; she should be fast tracked to officiate at more important games. I would love for her to call Manchester United players off-side when they next play my team, Arsenal.

The furore that has greeted Gray’s comments has shown casually ignorant sexism now ‘aint kosher in football as has long been case in other sports for years. No-one tells Paula Radcliffe or Jessica Ennis to stick to doing the dishes as they rack up medals for Team GB around the world.

It also shows how much more mature the relationship between the sexes is in Britain that in Italy, where cartoon misogynist Silvio Barely-stops-getting-ani seems to have managed to regain his oily grip on power after his centre-right friends backed him up. He’s probably offered to throw them a party to celebrate.

But back home, for Gray and Keys it’s not so much “bunga, bunga” as “bunga off”. Quite right too and I’ve managed to write this without once using the ‘Gray shown the red card’ cliché. Oh, damn.

Daniel Bamford is the Young Fabian Networks Officer.