Harriet Harpersons war against men stalled! Yay!

If you fancy going mental and murdering your wife or girlfriend this weekend if shes been sleeping with someone else, but are scared you might face some significant jail time, breathe a sigh of relief as the Lords have sunk a bill that would have stopped men who kill their spouses getting away with a manslaughter charge if they were cheating on them.

There’s a lot of stuff Harman has come out with thats total nonsense – saying Lehman Brothers wouldn’t have crashed if it were Lehman Sisters, and that she’s much more concerned about getting women to the boards of directorships as opposed to getting women fair pay in hundreds of Labour-run councils where they have been ripped off.

But most of the attacks on her have been because she is a woman who occasionally tried to bring in some progressive measures for women, like the law above that was torpedoed, or trying to improve rape convictions. And most of the attacks have been part of a misogynist campaign against her.

This torpedoing of a law which would have stopped murderers escaping with manslaughter shows that the Conservative right are hypocrites when it comes to attacking stuff like the Human Rights Act for defending the criminal over the victim. They are quite prepared to make excuses for crimes men commit, whether its murder – “she cheated”, down to rape – “she was drunk”.

It also exposes the Lords for what they are, a group of the unelected old boys club totally unaccountable to anyone.

Hopefully in 2011 the SSP can return some feminist MSP’s to Holyrood to make the case for an independent Socialist Republic where an unelected medieval anachronism like the Lords can’t continue to excuse violence against women.