WRITING IN THE FT this week, Gideon Rachman said that the vote to leave the European Union has been so polarising that the two camps––Leave and Remain––are no longer capable of dispassionate analysis.
Rachman went on to say that these two parties behave like sets of football fans, “cheering anything that seems to confirm their prejudices and dismissing any discordant information.” He adds that Remainers are preoccupied with proving that everything in Brussels is “rosy”, while Leavers take any chance they get to proclaim that the EU is on the verge of collapse.
Rachman is right. Our national debate on Brexit is a never-ending shouting match that never goes anywhere and doesn’t solve anything. No one seems to care that Brexit is irreversible, and that the logical thing to do is unite as a nation and look forward, and try to decide on the best outcome from the ongoing negotiations. And no one seems to care about anything else––Brexit might be “era-defining” and “the greatest constitutional change since the way”, but that doesn’t mean that daily life stops. And it doesn’t mean there aren’t other serious problems in our country that need to be resolved.
This thought sprang to mind when I read about a loophole that makes it hard to charge “upskirt” voyeurs. When Brexit looms in the background, this may not seem that “important”. But try telling that to one of the many women who have suffered the indignity of being filmed under their skirt or dress, or the parents of children as young as ten who campaigners say are also victims of this disgusting behaviour. Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University, said that the Government’s failure to provide an effective criminal law in this area “breaches women’s human rights.”
I wrote about this in September after David Lidington, the justice secretary, said he would “consider” a ban on upskirt photography. I took issue with his wording and the near-total lack of interest that it suggested. At the time, a young woman called Gina had also started a petition to make upskirt photos illegal under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. She had noticed two men taking photos of her at a music festival, and had grabbed the phone and given it to the police. Five days later, she was told the case had been closed because a festival field was not deemed “private” enough for the upskirters to be charged as voyeurs, and since two or more people didn’t see the resulting images, they were not deemed to have “outraged public decency.” If it’s illegal to pinch someone’s bum or to grope a woman’s breast, how can it possible be OK, in law, to angle a camera or phone so you can take a photo of a woman’s crotch from under her skirt? In 2010, the government somehow missed this when they “bolstered” the existing sexual harassment laws.
This is just one example. The point is that our preoccupation with Brexit, though understandable, is leaving little room for debate about other things. It means that important stories slip down down web pages and find themselves hidden away in the middle pages of newspapers. And it means that serious problems continue, unresolved.
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CityAM
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