Stephen Flynn's boys club will elbow women aside for their ambition

Being a woman in politics is tough, and that is an understatement. It’s being subject to online abuse like you have never seen and having strangers tear you apart. It’s being judged by what you wear and what you look like, rather than for your passions or determination. It’s being called every loaded, misogynistic trope under the sun any time you dare to speak. It’s being greeted on social media by death threats and unsolicited sexual advances.

And we are to accept it all as normal, or we don’t get a seat at the table. Parties across the board are failing the women in their ranks – there’s very little tangible support that actually exists.

If you want to open the door, you best be prepared for what you will find behind it and if you are not you will probably be chewed up and spit back out again one way or another.

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Whether you cave to the mental pressure yourself or you are nudged out so that your colleague can take your job despite already having one of his own, it’s a harsh but true reality.

Even simply obtaining a seat at a table as uninviting as this often requires official interventions and mechanisms like all-women candidate lists. The very kind that helped Nicoll break through gendered barriers to become the talented parliamentarian that she is.

The systemic challenges that women face in being represented in this space are so entrenched that if we don’t take decisive action to smash through them they will remain firmly in our way. This is proven to be the case.

Make no mistake, when we see a woman elected to a political position, she has endured a litany of trials and tribulations just to be standing there. And that she will continue to endure, day in and day out, until (and after) she decides to leave politics.

That is why this leaves such a sour taste. It feels like the Westminster boys’ club are bullishly marching up the road to hoard elected positions, and if women get in their way then they will simply elbow them out without so much as a second thought.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn photographed in London (Image: PA) It also isn’t just about Nicoll. This speaks to all women, involved in politics at any level or indeed not involved in politics at all, and it tells us that our access to this space will be determined by men. Even if they are generous enough to step aside for all-women shortlists or other equality mechanisms, they will only count for as long as men want them to count for.

Even if men are “progressive” or even outwardly feminist, their own ambitions and egos will take priority over our access.

Being a self-proclaimed progressive, or even being a member of a progressive party, doesn’t cut it. If you are not actively doing whatever you can within your power to make the world a fairer place then you are not as progressive or as well meaning as you think you are.

In fact, arguably the ultimate test of a progressive man in power is to watch how he utilises that power for the benefit of those with less of a voice.

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If women are going to be equally represented in our political sphere and have equal access in the way that men do, then a lot of the responsibility for aiding that process inevitably rests on the shoulders of men.

The undoing of any mechanism of privilege demands that those holding that privilege be willing to surrender it, or it will never be dismantled effectively. Not only is this an example of not surrendering your privilege, it is actively enforcing it to take a position from a woman in a field where women are notoriously under-represented. And when you already have a position of your own.

It isn’t a side issue that should be shrugged at and given no credence, and it isn’t an issue of “civil war”; but rather a test of our fundamental principles. If we can’t as a progressive party confidently stand against this, and put mechanisms in place to prevent it from happening, then I fear we are lost.

I don’t want to hear middle-of-the-road musings on it either, I want to hear decisive opposition. It should not be too much of an ask given how we position ourselves politically.

There is of course, on top of the flagrant disregard for the hard-earned positions of women, the issue of double jobbing.

Douglas Ross was criticised by the SNP for being an MP and MSP at once (Image: PA) I have to say I am finding it nauseating to see so many tripping over themselves to make excuses for this, as if they have not spent the last however many years levelling criticism at Douglas Ross for the exact same thing. It’s rank hypocrisy and I’m not afraid to call it that.

In politics, having wishy-washy principles is often an irreparable offence in the eyes of the electorate – ask Scottish Labour. I think we should test that theory at our peril.

I stand by my assertions that Ross should commit to being either an MP or an MSP, and I would expect the same of any elected representative.

Being an elected parliamentarian is a privilege that demands your full attention. There is no reality in which it is possible to deliver to the highest possible standard for your constituents by juggling both and it is the height of arrogance to assert that you are capable of it.

The whole thing is a farce, and it is time for the genuinely progressive men in particular to speak up with some conviction.