Stella Creasy on being the first MP to have maternity cover and why misogyny is still a blind spot

This month, Stella Creasy will make history as the first MP to appoint a locum for her maternity cover. In their first joint interview, they tell Samuel Fishwick about blazing a trail and why abuse of female politicians must stop now

If you think general elections look challenging, says Stella Creasy, try gearing up for one when you’re 36 weeks pregnant. “Sadiq [Khan] came to campaign with me in Walthamstow the other day and I was ten minutes behind him to every door, wheezing, ‘HELLO!’” beams the Labour MP for Walthamstow. “My due date is the end of November,” she adds, “and that’s one deadline this year that definitely can’t be moved. I’ve got a baby’s head on my bladder. Most of my clothes don’t fit me any more. And putting tights on — oh my God!”

She’s delighted, then, to introduce the world to a new face this week: Kizzy Gardiner, 35, her freshly-appointed locum, the first official maternity cover ever appointed to be a Member of Parliament. “I’m astonished that in 2019 this is the first time we’re doing this,” says Gardiner, who begins her new role on November 18. Meanwhile, Martin Whitfield, the jovial MP for East Lothian, has also joined them today at Portcullis House. He will act as Creasy’s proxy, voting on her behalf in any Parliamentary votes during her maternity leave.

It is an overdue first: Gardiner will take up the casework, campaigns and concerns of Walthamstow residents during Creasy’s six-month maternity leave. “What was genuinely quite upsetting on the day we interviewed for the position,” says Creasy, “was that every single woman — pretty much — asked about abuse, and what it was like to be in the public eye. It made me ... I mean I felt very personally responsible.”

Creasy has been targeted by the anti-abortion group CBR UK, and its #StopStella campaign, since July, when she helped persuade MPs to vote to give women in Northern Ireland the same abortion rights as in the rest of the UK. A 20ft-wide poster showing Creasy’s face next to what was claimed to be a picture of a dead 24-week foetus was displayed in the centre of Walthamstow.

“If it was about my skin colour, or my religion, or my sexuality, people would go, ‘That’s a hate crime,’” she says. “Misogyny is a big blind spot.” While Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, was in touch directly to “express concern, absolutely” over the abuse, she would dearly “love to see misogyny being made a hate crime as part of the Labour manifesto” (she, not Gardiner, will be leading her campaign to hold on to Walthamstow).

Creasy argues Boris Johnson will “be seeking to make this [election] a culture war, borrowing a playbook from Donald Trump”. War? “When you have women getting up in the chamber and saying they’re so genuinely frightened because of the threats they are experiencing and because of the lack of action on those things, because there’s this blind spot, and the Prime Minister says, ‘Oh humbug,’ that’s gaslighting, you know? And that has very real consequences.” Members of some parties “have called me a baby killer, and I’m facing a campaign called #StopStella. I mean, how do you stop people? It’s a very real threat.”

This election, 18 women, including Nicky Morgan, Louise Ellman and Heidi Allen, have announced they won’t stand, partly on account of abuse they’ve endured. Female MPs are also to be given a dedicated security officer as part of attempts to protect them from threats, abuse and intimidation.

Gardiner has had to be briefed on security. “You have to call it out for what it is,” Creasy says. “You can have really passionate arguments with people, you can really disagree. [But] you don’t need to harass them to the point that they’re intimidated and living in fear, and eople are getting death threats, and bomb threats and rape threats, which is what is happening to my colleagues on a regular basis now, simply in order to win an argument.”

Last week, Creasy was also one of 72 female MPs who signed an open letter of support for Meghan Markle (Holly Lynch, the MP who spearheaded it, says Creasy, is “gold dust”). “All of us wanted to say: ‘No, no, no, the problem isn’t with you, it’s with the environment you’re being put into, and you need to know that people see that and hear that’.” Abuse of female MPs and a lack of workplace support for new parents are two sides of the same coin, she says. “It’s not just the open hostility to difference, it’s the unconscious bias.”

You can have arguments with people — but you don’t need to harass them to the point they’re living in fear.

Stella Creasy

Creasy had to win a lengthy argument with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) for it to provide support to her constituency during maternity leave. Ipsa demanded medical certificates to prove she was pregnant, and official paperwork to demonstrate that her absence would affect the people of Walthamstow. It was, she says, as if Ipsa didn’t see the work she does in her constituency as part of her job as an MP.

Gardiner will be paid the equivalent of £50,000 a year, pro rata, by Ipsa, which pays the salaries of MPs and their staff (Gardiner tells me she’s also head of UK giving and supporter engagement for the development charity ShelterBox, where she successfully transitioned to a job-share of her own to make childcare for her daughter easier, an arrangement supported by her employer).

But this is still only a one-off, an “experiment”, as Whitfield puts it. His ambition, along with that of Creasy and Gardiner, is to ensure that the same level of support is afforded every MP. “What’s been heartbreaking”, says Creasy, “and I’ve spoken very publicly about this, about the difficulties I’ve had in getting pregnant, and the miscarriages I’ve faced, [is that I] was then talking to the Parliamentary authorities who were like, ‘We don’t recognise that MPs go on maternity leave.’”

Voting Labour, “the party of equality”, is a chance to change the system, Creasy says, although “Labour has problems with racism, anti-Semitism, with sexual harassment”, she admits. “Again, that is not unique to the Labour Party. But I hold them to a higher standard on those things, absolutely.” Can they win? “Anything can happen,” she says. “We have a case to make at the election, but I also recognise we’re facing one of the most toxic environments within which to make that case.”

She maintains Brexit should be resolved as a priority, and will continue to make the case for a second referendum. “I can’t see a better deal than the one we have now, I think we should remain in the European Union.” But “the biggest challenge we’ve got in this country is that people have lost faith that anything good can happen”.

Creasy prefers not to speak publicly about her partner. “He’s been through it as well,” she says. “But he’s just the best. I feel very sorry for the sonographers, though, because I’ve been bursting into tears every time they’ve done a scan, and they’re like, ‘What have I done wrong?’”

Would she want her child to follow in her footsteps? My mum always says, when I bring this up, ‘Estate agent, how about that?’” laughs Creasy. “Look, my kid, at this point in time, I just want it to be born happy, and healthy, and alive, because at this point in time I’m still desperately scared that things could go wrong.”

Does she ever think of leaving politics and pursuing a quieter life? “The solution isn’t to walk away, the solution is to be part of it. That’s why I’m a socialist, because I get stuck in,” she says. “In fact, I’d be mortified if people thought that quitting was the best way to make their kids feel safe.”

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