Angela Eagle never stood a chance against the social media abuse and negativity. Which woman would?
And then there were none. As Angela Eagle stood down from the leadership contest yesterday, that was the last chance for the national Labour Party to pull a goal back after David Cameron’s ‘2–0’ jibe in his last PMQs as Prime Minister.
A few days after that taunt, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (for whom the adjective ‘beleaguered’ would appear to be a legal requirement) was glowering at the Tories’ second woman Prime Minister. Had Corbyn looked beyond Westminster, he would have noted that up in Scotland, the First Minister and the leaders of the Scottish Conservative and Labour parties are both women. In Wales, Plaid Cymru’s leader is also a woman.
Aside from caretaker stints from Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman, no woman has made it even close to the very top of the party. And, from Barbara Castle all the way to Eagle, you can make a case why each woman hasn’t made it. What you can’t do is make a case why no woman has made it.
In Angela Eagle’s case you can hardly say she has been defeated by political giants — Corbyn’s popularity amongst his fanbase is inversely proportionate to his success the minute he steps outside of that bubble, while Owen Smith is, at best, an unknown quantity for most.
The case against Eagle was hardly conclusive — she may be policy-light (but let me know what new policies Corbyn has conjured up since he became leader) and she may have struggled to light up an empty room at her campaign launch as journalists fled to watch Andrea Leadsom’s meltdown. But what did she do so wrong?
The social media analysis company Impact Social looked at the data from 35,000 social media posts, forums and open news sites — and found enormous negativity about Eagle. Media reports would have it that that negativity was based around gender and sexuality and all laced with the threat of violence. Indeed, the ‘treacherous lesbian’ abuse, the accusation that ‘she’s as charismatic as herpes’ (though you’d have to know both to be sure) are appalling.
Added to that, the death threats, the reports of a brick through the window of her constituency office and the abuse and threats received via her office phone and email and it paints an ugly picture of internal Labour politics. Whether the abuse was informed by gender and sexuality or whether those were just the tools that moronic individuals took up can be argued for as long as you like. But neither Corbyn nor Smith are accused on the same grounds — indeed Smith took awkward pains to stress his ‘normality’.
The abuse is anecdotal and unacceptable. The negativity around Eagle is almost relentless. Sixty percent of mentions around her were negative, and only 15% positive. With those sort of numbers, you begin to suspect either an organised campaign or a culture of Groupthink. The atmosphere generated in the party between the Corbynistas and ‘the rest’ (the ‘Blairite scum’, you know) has created a malevolence in tone which has made debate toxic and made a victim of Eagle.
Her perceived faults are laid out in full, and in detail, for social media audiences to pick over. The claims have varying degrees of veracity, with 6% claiming she’s dishonest and 17% claiming she faked the vandalism of her office — while, oddly, a further 7% accuse her of failing to control her supporters.
Her ideological purity is called into question, with 11% remembering that she voted for the war in Iraq (‘warmonger’), while her ‘carcrash’ media interviews attract the scorn of another 9%.
A highly significant 28% reckon she’s ‘not fit for office’.
In amongst the (lower) numbers professing support, there is much ‘generic’ support (from 29% of her supporters) and optimism (‘she will beat Corbyn’ reckoned 23%). But there in the specifics — there is some chatter around the campaign message (16%), but no single message broke through. Indeed, the most coherent moment was her reaction to the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.
As her campaign managers reflect on where it went wrong, they will look at the level of abuse and negativity around her. They will, rightly, find her as a victim and, rightly, assume that much has been coordinated or, at best, emerged from an internal atmosphere of conflict, dreadful abuse and negativity. This isn’t high politics we’re watching.
But if Labour is to survive in a recognisable form, then someone has to rise above that, to generate a positivity that survives the abuse and to have policy messages which people can actually hear over the noise. Angela Eagle wasn’t that person. Wasn’t that woman.
While no woman reaches the top of Labour, the suspicion will remain that they are subjected to a kind of scrutiny that men aren’t. That the rough and tumble of politics is made a whole lot rougher for them by a poisonous culture that has more than a whiff of misogyny about it.
Presumably, Smith versus Corbyn will be not be a debate about gender. But if you expect the discussions to be about policy rather than personality and to be civil rather than abusive, then you may be rather disappointed.
