SCOTTISH LibDems have repeatedly failed to promote women into parliament, party leader Willie Rennie admitted yesterday, as he unveiled plans for an overhaul of its candidates.
He announced Jo Swinson, the former East Dunbartonshire MP and minister for women and equalities in the Coalition, would be part of a working group to fix the problem.
Addressing around 400 conference delegates in Dunfermline, Rennie said his party, which prizes local decision making, had to change to correct its male dominance.
“All our MPs are men, and four of our five MSPs are too. I know many in the party instinctively do not favour positive action but I need to be frank with you - nothing else has worked.”
He said he would chair the working group alongside Swinson, LGBT activist Sophie Bridger, veteran agent Sheila Ritchie, and former candidate and advocate Fred Mackintosh.
It will examine all women shortlists and "zipping" - in which equal numbers of men and women are elected - then put its plans to the party’s spring conference to deliver more female candidates in winnable positions in the 2019 European, 2020 Westminster and 2021 Holyrood elections.
“My aim is that within the next six years we will have a strong team of parliamentarians that will be truly representative of our party and the society we seek to represent,” Rennie said.
“I want half of our parliamentarians to be women. The status quo is no longer an option.”
Speaking to the media later, Rennie said he had felt increasing “exasperation” with activists selecting male candidates ahead of women, despite the party’s emphasis on equality.
He said “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was party members putting men at the top of seven of the eight regional lists for Holyrood next year.
The process saw the party’s only female MSP, Alison McInnes, ranked below ex-MSP Mike Rumbles on the North East list, all but guaranteeing her exit from parliament.
Elsewhere in his speech, Rennie called on Nicola Sturgeon to end her “dance” over a second referendum, as the first ballot had “permanently damaged” friendships and families.
“For the sake of the country, we need to move on from those divisions,” he said.
Rennie also said he wanted to end the “suffocating” culture of “targets, controls and top-down diktats" under the SNP, and replace it with a bold “freedom agenda”, where power was transferred from central government to schools, the NHS, police and communities.
He proposed a Public Service and Leadership Bill to return full control of business rates and council tax to councils, and create new burgh councils where there was public demand.
With membership up 25 per cent, Rennie said he was “determined to grow as a party” in the next five-year parliament, and urged Yes voters to support LibDems in May.
Labour’s “march to the hard left” and the Scottish Tories “crawling to the right” had opened up space to recover and push reforms in education, mental health and justice, he said.
Tory chief whip John Lamont called Rennie’s appeal to Yes voters “desperate”.
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