Harriet Harman has called on Jeremy Corbyn to take a tougher stance on Labour members who abuse and troll the party’s MPs.
The Labour candidate was speaking at the Hay festival about her political career and the many battles against sexism she has had to fight.
She said there was a big issue around the abuse female MPs get from party members and Corbyn, as Labour leader, needed to do more. “It should be one strike and you’re out.
“It’s not good enough for Jeremy to say, ‘I don’t do it, I don’t agree with it, I don’t condone it.’ As a leader you have to say, ‘This is what I’m going to do to stop it.’”
Harman is the UK’s longest continuously serving female MP, elected in 1982 when 97% of the Commons were men.
She talked about the difficulty juggling of family and career.
Harman described some of the dilemmas she has faced over when and when not to fight. “It is quite difficult to know when to kick up a fuss and when to let something go,” she said. “I was almost permanently having rows with my colleagues and the other side and was regarded as unfriendly and prickly … all women who were fighting battles were cast as that.”
One example was when, as deputy leader to Gordon Brown, Harman was not invited to a G20 dinner held at Downing Street. She was invited to the wives’ dinner.
“What was the appropriate response? Sarah Brown had obviously extended the invite. I didn’t want to be unsisterly because I’m not a wife in this context.”
It was a ridiculous invite, Harman said, but she did not want to snub it so she went along and sat next to the Canadian prime minister’s wife. “We talked all night about diets.”
Another occasion was the first Cabinet meeting after being elected deputy leader. She discovered that she had been moved from a prominent seat opposite the prime minister to one at the end of the table. She went in and found Jack Straw’s name on what should have been her seat.