Monday night and what I wrote about it:

I went to the 50:50 #Askhertostand event at Westminster Palace last night.The 50:50 movement, founded by Frances Scott, is based around getting more women into UK politics. Right now of the 650 seats in our parliament, men hold 442, women hold 208; it’s better than it was, but not impressive.

I got there early and dashed into Westminster Hall which looked a bit bald.Wandering beyond the stairs and St Stephens Hall, there was buzz and beauty, light and colour. I was wandering in a happy dream of the place when to my surprise Iain Duncan Smith appeared through a nearby pair of double-doors and scampered off into the distance like Alice’s White Rabbit. He looked nervous and strangely fluffy, his hair whiter than on camera, and he licked his lips, which is an odd thing to do in public. Someone should have a word with him about that.

Because of my determination to see all this (except IDS, the sight of whom I never wished for in all my days tbh) I missed the 50:50 rally at the railings and the group photo with the t-shirts, tote bags and banners on the lobby steps. Instead I went straight through to committee room 10, a war of wallpaper vs carpet in which there were no winners. I sat down in a chair bearing the crowned portcullis, and waited to learn something.

There were female MPs of all parties, all pleasant and some memorable and witty. SNP MP Philippa Whitford was without doubt the star of the show, and Amelia Womack, Deputy Leader of the Greens, spoke eloquently for the need for diversity, but everyone had something constructive and kindly to add. The problem was that it was mostly the same thing, which could be boiled down to a trope: The Girl Who Didn’t Know She Was A Princess.

“I was working as a* marketing director/surgeon/trade unionist/activist at the top of my career when I was asked to stand and I thought, ‘What me? Never! But then…” Variations on this theme were abundant, the career achievement followed by a happenstance contact who suggested standing, followed by actually standing and then often random luck, like a candidate (inevitably a man) dropping off the lists. I waited to hear some single mother say, ‘I decided to stand because every time I think of child benefit at £20.70 a week I nearly punch a wall,’ or a factory worker saying ‘I decided to stand because I’m worried about how many of my friends and neighbours have to use foodbanks.’ Such motivations were not mentioned perhaps because specifics could have been seen as political criticisms in a determinedly neutral environment. They were wonderful women, these MPs, but many seemed to share a similarity of more than everyday background success. Lumping them together as 'of a kind,' might be wrong, but it would also be understandable.

There was also very little mention made of mentoring programmes, though apparently these do exist. The one referred to most often was the Conservative Women’s Organisation. Are there similar organisations in the other parties? Wouldn’t it have been worth hearing representatives from each, telling women how their development programmes work and what they could do?

The whole event was long on encouragement and short on actual information. The most telling thing was the demeanour of each of the speakers; they all shone with a kind of happiness, and when they told you they had the best job in the world you could see they believed it. One said that empathy was the single quality needed in an MP, an approach starkly different to everything we have been taught to expect from our public servants. If that’s true, there could be a new beauty shining in those august chambers, and yes, we need to stand by each other to make it happen; that’s the brilliance at the heart of the 50:50 movement, but it’s not enough. Tell us how.