What can it be like going to work every day, knowing someone may be waiting there to assault you? Checking to see if there’s a bottle of water on your desk, in case someone who’s threatened to throw acid in your face is in the line to see you? Rearranging the chairs in your office so that they slow an attacker, enabling you to exit by a special safety door?
Maybe it’s not a work day and you can relax — at least until curiosity gets the better of you, and you check the newspapers and social media for some passing mention of a goal you have achieved. Instead you find your face and your efforts taken apart, autopsy style, and so you escape your stress by hopping on your bicycle… but down the road, there’s an oddly aggressive cyclist who appears to be stalking you, and…
That is the life of Emma Webster, former high school teacher, now a divorcée, mother of a fragile teenage girl and Labour MP for Portsmouth South, London. Properly staged and photographed, she is a graceful package of stylish power, intense in her commitment to serve her constituents, especially poor and vulnerable women. This is not a popular priority.
Among the relationships to balance are those with her insecure daughter, her resentful ex-husband, his judgmental new partner and of course Britain’s tabloid press, allegedly the world’s most dangerous, members of which smile and smile and play the villain.
British novelist Sarah Vaughan did not so much invent Emma Webster as assemble her. Vaughan, an Oxford English graduate, didn’t need IKEA-like instructions; she spent 11 years reporting on the antics of British politics for the Guardian before leaving to write political fiction in 2008.
“I’m attuned to doublespeak, the slipperiness and moral ambiguity,” she commented in a recent interview. Vaughan is also a superb storyteller and a natural master of suspense.
She was inspired to write Reputation by the actual experiences of female MPs, one of whom confided that she had nine locks on the door of her home.
Sadly and dramatically, Vaughan makes it clear that misogyny lives in the halls of electoral politics, and shows no sign of moving out soon. Misogyny’s target may be female politicians, but its true victim is democracy itself, which is disempowered and diminished by the absence of female candidates who have been chased away from politics.
The trouble with hatred of any variety is that it tends to corrupt everyone in the room and can even lead (accidentally?) to mayhem and murder. MP Baxter is charged with the latter when a tabloid writer is found dead in her apartment. Baxter is an especially unpopular suspect, campaigning as she does against sexual bullying, revenge porn and the online abuse of women and girls.
Sarah Vaughan has woven an acidic cautionary tale for any woman considering entering politics — and, indeed, for any person who takes the right to vote seriously. Her first thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal, has just been filmed as a six-episode series for Netflix. Reputation, Vaughan’s gripping fifth novel, has already been optioned for the small screen.
Lesley Hughes is the author of The Dead Candidate’s Report: a Political Memoir.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
