Sunak vs Starmer, & standing up for women

Shh ladies, the men are talking.

It’s been…. 84 years. My experience of the election campaign which so far has lasted five weeks and has one more week to go is just the Titanic gif going round and round in my head.

How’s it been for you?

Anyway, here I am, writing about last night’s leaders’ debate, before I start work.

In 2018, I wrote an article for the New Statesman about a report that had been published by the Women’s Budget Group about how Universal Credit, the Conservative Party’s much-criticised reimagining of the benefits system, was at risk of “facilitating” domestic abuse. The policy, which nominates a breadwinner, left women in financially abusive situations at risk of being made destitute or in debt.

That same year, I interviewed a domestic abuse survivor who had fled her abuser in the middle of the night, because she knew if she stayed, he would kill her and her children. She described how the impact of austerity meant that there was no refuge for her to go to. She was offered a hostel with male sex offenders; ended up living in a room that was all tiled (I don’t even have to look at the article, this is seared in my brain) on the floors and walls. When it came to accessing housing, the council wanted to get a written statement from her abuser that she was “unintentionally homeless” - effectively getting him to admit his violence had forced her from her home, while also disclosing her location to a man who wanted to kill her.

“I knew I would die,” she told me.

In 2020, I interviewed a domestic abuse survivor who woke up in the early days of the pandemic to find that her child support had not been paid. The DWP had stopped enforcing payments due to the chaos of Covid. She was advised to contact her ex herself and make arrangements for payment. “I’m a domestic abuse survivor,” she said, exasperated. “I was in shock. I’m really angry.”

That same year, I interviewed a domestic abuse survivor who had fled an abusive home in India and claimed asylum in the UK. Her abuser would lock her in a room. Again, I don’t have to look this up, these women’s stories live in my head. She described the tiny allowance given to asylum seeking people meant she was trapped in her home and that gave her flashbacks to being locked up back home. She told me how when she had her first interview on the border, the Home Office official said, in front of the woman’s daughter, “I’ll know if you’re lying.”

In 2022, I interviewed Southall Black Sisters who told me about a woman with no recourse to public funds, who had fled her abuser, was forced to subsist of toast and hot chocolate in order to make sure she had enough money to feed her child.

Don’t get me started on Grenfell.

Since I became a journalist, I have lost count of the articles I have written about the impact of austerity and the hostile environment on vulnerable women - chiefly domestic abuse victim/survivors and rape victim/survivors.

I’ve written about how the cuts to the welfare state shredded the safety net that gave women more options to leave violent homes.

I’ve written about how NRPF traps women with abusers, because they are terrified of destitution and they are terrified of deportation.

I’ve written about mothers who are FGM survivors facing deportation, terrified their daughters will be cut.

I’ve written about refuges closing their doors because central government cuts to local government funding has led to mass refuge closures.

I’ve written about women raped in hospital wards, because the commitment to mixed-sex wards has failed while the NHS goes underfunded.

And that’s before we even get to poverty, and the struggles women face in mouldy housing, trying to keep their children healthy and safe. Or the women in prison for crimes related to deprivation and inequality. Or the asylum-seeking women who are in legal limbo – the woman who told me for my last story for the Observer how she wakes up in the night screaming.

The suffering and harm done to these women are inextricably linked to the policies of the Conservative Party and the Tory-led governments since 2010. It is their policies of austerity that have led to women with no safe place to go, forced to remain in homes where their life is in danger. It is austerity that pushed women made homeless by domestic abuse into mixed-sex hostels. It is austerity that has led to women starving in order to feed their kids, and that has facilitated abusers determined to control the household finances. It is the Tory’s hostile environment policies that have led to traumatised women having flashbacks and nightmares about the desperate situations they have fled. It is the Tory’s festival of cuts that have cut deep into women’s lives, leaving scars that it will take Labour a long time to heal.

So excuse me if I don’t believe Rishi Sunak when he stands in front of the BBC TV cameras and says he cares about protecting women’s single sex spaces. Excuse me if I don’t believe Rishi Sunak when he says that he wants female spaces to be protected.

Instead, I’ll believe the many, many women I have interviewed over the years who have told me the truth of what it means when Tory vandalism destroyed our safe spaces. I’ll believe women.

Obligatory book plug

I had actually planned to write about Miriam Cates’ latest bulls**t, but after drinking wine and shouting at the TV last night, Sunak’s bulls**t took priority. But if you want to read a whole book about how the right is attacking women’s reproductive rights, you know what to do.

Buy Bodies Under Siege

30% of the eBook!

Oh! Also I went to Skopje to talk about the book. It was great!

What I’m writing

Months of FOI requests, of data analysis, of resubmitted FOI requests, of background chats, of talking to case studies, of drafting, of re-drafting, all went into my long-read investigation into sexual abuse in the military.

A war on two fronts: How the British military fails women who report rapes

I am hugely grateful to the women who shared their stories with me, and my amazing editorial team at openDemocracy who saw the potential of this investigation and encouraged me to do a New Yorker-style long read. I am working on new leads about this subject. Watch this space…

What I’m loving

This investigation into the killings of Gazan journalists broke my heart and is really important to read, by David Pegg, Hoda Osman, and Manisha Ganguly.

‘An incredible loss for Palestine’: Israeli offensive takes deadly toll on journalists

What I’m reading

Oh god, so many books.

Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

Then she was gone by Lisa Jewell

Game of life by Claire Mackintosh

Madness Visible by Janine di Giovanni

The spymaster of Baghdad by Margaret Coker

Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar

Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser

Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, trans Anne McLean

In Diamond Square, by Merce Rodoreda, trans Peter Bush

What I watched

Gosh, I actually watched some films and not just re-runs of Seinfeld!

I really liked Civil War. I also watched Glory with Denzel Washington and Captain Raymond Holt. On a sillier tip, I watched that film with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum called The Lost City and I re-watched The Heat because I love it! Documentaries-wise I watched Once Upon a Time in Iraq, and OJ: Made in America; and The Truth vs Alex Jones.

And finally, FINALLY, watching Veep and let me just say, there’s a press officer working in a branch of government that is Jonah Ryan.

So yes, a rare weekday missive from me and I’ll try and write up the Miriam Cates thing soon… watch this space.

Ciao ciao!