Gentlemen's Club
Laura Hankins
Calm down, dear1
the security team
make you feel as if
you’re about to catch a flight
all perspex screens
x-ray machines and hi-viz staff
so it feels wrong when
you step out
not into a hangar
or first-class lounge
but a musty place
static in spite of its size
where the statues rub their shoulders
against high ceilings
The front bench team
likes your new hairstyle2
school trips are supposed
to educate,
your mother had said
but what can you learn
from that palace on the river?
Feminists are now amongst
the most obnoxious bigots3
there are no flight attendants, just
hushed tour guides in waistcoats
mutterings about division
bells, the chairman of ways and
means, some luxury woolsack…
you pick at the cuff
of your acrylic jumper, moving
towards the centre of the room
Time and again
the Tottymeter
has gone off as a young woman delegate
mounts the rostrum4
background noises rise from
commons chaperones clarifying on
confidence motions, will she
give way, parliamentary scrutiny…
And still you feel defiance
just to stand there
With the fickleness of their sex
they are following the polls5
And still you hear the murmuring
of a hundred schoolboy tongues
Buller buller buller…
Behave yourself, woman!6
All quotes borrowed from our elected representatives:
David Cameron to Angela Eagle, 2011
Eric Pickles to Hazel Blears (‘may I say that the entire Front-Bench team likes her new hairstyle’), 2010
Dominic Raab, 2011
Boris Johnson, writing for The Telegraph about the 1996 Labour Party Conference
Ibid.
Alex Salmond to Anna Soubry, 2015