Guido is causing a rather silly stink about the percentage of Labour female MPs who have stepped down compared to Tory female MPs.

He has a post here which shows that Labour has a lost of female MPs of 11.1% to the Tories 10.4%. Which is true.

Here’s something else that’s true: Apart from the deselected Anne McIntosh, all the Tory women who are stepping down (or have already done so) so far were elected in 2010. In fact they have an average length of service of 7.2 years. 4.5 years if you count those who have voluntarily stepped back from the Tory Parliamentary Party.

Another true fact: The Labour women stepping down have an average length of service of 21.2 years. The longest serving, Ann Clwyd has been an MP for 31 years.

That’s quite a stark difference. As is the clear difference between an MP retiring and one stepping down after one term. Labour have had more women for longer. So of course some are coming up for retirement.

Still, you can prove anything with facts. You can also make a nonsense of those self same facts as Guido has today decided to prove!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 21st, 2014 at 16:52 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.