The Enemy Within

What happened when I asked, in three words, whether a populist party’s next group might include some women.

I made a mistake earlier today.

I saw a tweet from Rupert Lowe MP celebrating Restore Britain’s newly elected councillors taking up their seats. Nine men. I replied with three words and a flex emoji: “That’s great we also need some women though 💪”.

I should say, here, that I have been fully behind Restore since before it was a party. When it was still a movement, I was there.

I have contributed to Rupert Lowe’s rape gang crowdfunder. I have contributed to the Open Justice crowdfunder for the court transcripts. I have never once smeared Reform – the wider movement and I want, broadly, the same things. I think Kemi Badenoch is a good leader of the Conservative Party.

Within an hour of those three words, I had been told I was doing “identity politics”. That I was a “DEI bell” (with shame-bell GIF). That women shouldn’t be councillors unless they earned it on merit – as though asking for representation were the same as demanding lowered standards. Several replies told me women belong in “traditional roles having babies”. One reply argued that women who can’t withstand pile-ons from their own side shouldn’t be in politics at all – in other words, that the pile-on itself was healthy gatekeeping.

I never said women should be appointed over more qualified men. The words are not there in my original reply. A number of respondents argued at length against a position I never held.

I also did not claim that women had applied for these roles and been turned down. I do not know whether any women put themselves forward in Great Yarmouth or anywhere else. I was asking the question, not asserting an answer. If no women of comparable calibre applied, I have no problem with the all-male outcome. That is how genuine merit works. The point of the original tweet was simply that the question was worth asking.

For the avoidance of doubt: I do not support DEI. I have never supported it. I have written publicly against identity-based quotas, lowered standards, and the elevation of unqualified candidates on the grounds of who they are rather than what they can do. Asking for women to be visible alongside men in a serious political party is not DEI – it is good representative democracy. The two are not the same thing. The pile-on insisted they were, because conflating them was easier than answering the actual question.

The most common defence, repeated by men and women in the thread, was that gender is irrelevant – we should simply pick the best person for the job. That is a lovely sentiment. It is also incomplete. Half of every councillor’s constituents are women. Those women might quite reasonably want some women representing them in the chamber. Asking for that is not asking for unqualified women to be elevated above qualified men. It is asking for a serious party to look like the country it intends to govern.

A meaningful number of those replies came from women. One woman pushed back against the pile-on – and I am eternally grateful to her. The rest were largely content to swing the gavel themselves.

I spent twenty-one years in policing, much of it on serious sexual offences. I built my platform speaking for women. I asked – in three words, on a Tuesday morning – whether the next group photograph of an avowedly populist party might include one of us.

The response told me everything I needed to know about a particular slice of the British right.

It is the slice that says “merit” until a woman points out the absence of women, at which point it becomes “identity politics.” The slice that, when she doesn’t back down, escalates to “have babies.” The slice that frames pile-ons as character-building rather than misogyny. And the slice that, increasingly, recruits women to police other women in service of all of the above.

I deleted the post. I should not have had to. But it was costing me time and energy I need elsewhere, and they were not going to stop.

I should be honest about what today has cost. I live with M.E., which means a sustained pile-on like this one has consequences for my body that last days, not hours. I have spent the last year doing my best to publicly advocate for women’s rights and for Restore Britain. To be attacked, for three gentle words about female representation, by people I had considered family in the movement – that has genuinely hurt. When your own side turns on you, it is a different kind of wound. It does not heal the same way.

The right has its own woman problem. It is not the same as the left’s. But it is real, and it is loud, and it sits underneath the surface waiting for any woman who dares to be visible while disagreeing.

I am not replying to the pile-on. I do not owe them my afternoon.

I am, however, writing this down – because the next time someone tells me women on the right have nothing to fear from their own side, I want a receipt.

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This piece is free to read and will remain so. But I want to be honest with you. I have severe Myalgic Encephalomylitis — a serious chronic illness that affects my energy, my cognitive function and my ability to function day to day. The job I loved broke my health. I am already paying a price for being here at all. Producing a piece like this causes crashes. I am sleeping constantly. I am exhausted in ways that are hard to describe. It would frankly be wiser for someone in my position not to be doing this.

But I am doing it anyway — in the small way I can — because I believe in justice and truth. I am new to the arena of writing. I am simply trying to help. To shine a small light. To do my part.

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Neither is expected. Both are genuinely appreciated.