Yesterday, Saturday 15th February, saw the death of Caroline flack, a former presenter on the popular TV show “Love Island”. Flack had been arrested on the 13th December 2019 after brutally attacking her partner with a lamp. She was suspended from her job, charged with actual bodily harm, and upon discovering she was to face trial for her domestic violence she took her own life. The story of her domestic violence and abuse featured regularly in the media in the weeks after her arrest as more details of the case emerged.

At HEqual we avoid watching Love Island, but by most accounts it’s a very trashy, exploitative and toxic television programme, and its audience is overwhelmingly female. In July 2018, three Members of Parliament outed themselves as superfans of the show, appearing on the ITV programme “This Morning” to discuss their love of the utterly awful show.

The three MPs in question are Jess Phillips, Lucy Powell and Stella Creasy, and they’re all remarkably similar. All three represent the Labour Party, they range in age from 38 to 45, they’re all misandrist left-wing feminists, they all represent very urban constituencies in the biggest cities, and all three regularly use Twitter.

The three pathetically boast of watching the show in Parliament when they’re actually supposed to be working and representing their constituents. The three also tweet inanely about the show, such as telling followers which couples they’re voting for and all other kinds of meaningless vapid nonsense

While the above is somewhat objectionable, every cloud has a silver lining, and the fact that all three are super-fans of the show of course means they can’t have missed the case of Flack, her abuse of her younger boyfriend, and her absence from their TV screens. This story would surely force all three to finally acknowledge the serious issue and scale of domestic violence against men in this country, the extraordinary disparities in funding between men and women and the woeful lack of help and support for victims.

Upon Flacks’ passing, as one might expect, all three noted her death almost immediately on Twitter, so lets examine the approach of each.

Jess Phillips

Phillips, the most famous misandrist of the three immediately paid tribute to abuser Caroline Flack, describing her death as “deeply sad and shocking”.

Of course Phillips usually laughs at the issue of people taking their own lives, well at least when the victims are men. And of course she tries to block debates about the issue of male suicide too. This last point is particularly important, becasue the first International Men’s Day debate significantly raised the profile of male suicide in the UK and the subsequent campaigns and awareness certainly saved lives. Thus, by attempting to block Davies’ debate and the progress that resulted from it, Phillips was effectively attempting to keep the suicide rate higher. Little wonder that she now attempts to rewrite history and blatantly lies about what she did.

Thankfully, the double standards of Phillips’ tribute to Flack was immediately challenged by multiple parties on Twitter, including a lady called Elaine who runs domestic violence perpetrator programmes. She asked of Phillips: “would you publicly offer condolences to a male who committed suicide whilst on trail for DV? I’m not judging just reflecting”

Elaine’s query is an extremely interesting and important rhetorical question, and one that Phillips has thus far ignored. However, it isn’t actually rhetorical because it’s indeed possible to find the answer.

In 2017 Phillips’ Labour Party colleague Carl Sargeant, a prominent member of the Welsh Assembly, faced accusations of inappropriate behaviour. The details of the Sargeant, case are still uncertain over two years later. Unlike Flack’s case there doesn’t yet appear to be any known proof of wrongdoing on his part, and in fact Sargeant, wasn’t even allowed to know the details of what he was supposed to have done wrong. He denied all wrongdoing but despite this, he was suspended from the Labour Party, and he was found hanged just four days later.

The despicable treatment of Sargeant by the Labour Party is one of the biggest scandals in Welsh politics in recent years, leading to the resignation of the party’s Welsh leader. Carwyn Jones even unlawfully tried to rig the inquiryinto Sargeant’s death and mistreatment.

Despite Twitter being her platform of choice for communication, Phillips hasn’t had a single word to say directly about Sargeant’s suicide. However, one day after his death she Tweeted the following:

If there is one take away from the last few weeks in politics, it is don’t cover stuff up, there are always people who will catch you out and for god sake learn to admit things and actually be sorry.

Thus, she’s already said more nice things about a random and deeply unpleasant known serial female abuser off the TV in a matter of hours, than she’s said about a highly respected male colleague in some twoo and a quarter years! A tip of the hat to a Twitter user who called out Phillips’ position around the time of Sargeant’s suicide.

In fact, at the time of Sargeant’s death, Phillips was actually pushing for all MPs guilty of misconduct to be axed by Parliament (not by constituents), stating of accused politicians: “there will be zero tolerance of this kind of behaviour to show there is no fear or favour of either members of parliament or members of the Labour movement”. She made this statement just two days before Sargeant’s suicide yet her “zero tolerance” position somehow doesn’t apply to female abusers, and instead she wholeheartedly supports female perpetrators of domestic violence, at least those in her own party such as Sarah Champion.

One might think Phillips’ hostility and lack of a tribute to Sargeant might stem from some sort of personal conflict between the two. Obviously we don’t know any details, but our searches for Phillips making any mention of her deceased colleague only came up with a Tweet by Seargant himself, promoting one of Phillips’ articles.

Readers might think they could be some solace for fans of Phillips in her conduct at the time of Flack’s arrest. She paid tribute to Flack at the time of her suicide, so what of Flack’s abuse and/or thoughts for her victim? Examining Phillips’ feed show zero mention of Flack’s abuse or her victim. Worse still, after Flack’s arrest as the story grew, Phillips actually doubled down and instead retweeted radfem domestic violence charity Women’s Aid, failing to mention any support options for male victims.

Lucy Powell

MP Lucy Powell doesn’t get as much attention in the media as Phillips, but has an awful lot in common with her, aside from their shared love of trashy toxic television shows.

For one thing, Powell paid tribute to abuser Caroline Flack, stating:

“Really shocked and saddened to hear about Caroline Flack. It’s tragic. People really do need to think about their duty of care towards those in the public eye.”

As with Phillips, Powell was an instant supporter of domestic violence perpetrator Sarah Champion, stating of the revelation of the abuse: “This will have been very hard for @ SarahChampionMP to talk about and re-live”. At HEqual we exposed this misconduct by Powell in a previous article.

As per Phillips, Powell had nothing to say about her colleague Carl Sargeant’s tragic suicide. One of her followers did briefly raise it at one point, but naturally not a peep from Powell, instead focusing on mean things people said about a feminist colleague’s appearance.

Checking Powell’s feed around the time of Flack’s arrest (and the weeks and months afterwards) also shows no mention of the incident nor any content concerning organisations offering support for male victims of domesitc violence. In fact, there isn’t even any acknowledgement of domesitc violence against men, despite it being such a topical issue.

Stella Creasy

Creasy didn’t actually explicitly pay tribute to Flack as per her feminist colleagues, but twice tweeted about suicide immediately following the announcement of her passing. This included a post stating:

“The tragedy is the pain. A pain so horrendous death seems like the only option. It’s not about the event. It’s about the mental pain that any of us has the potential to feel, but most don’t know. A pain that gives you no room at all.”

As per her Labour colleagues, there’s zero acknowledgement of Flack’s abuse anywhere on Creasy’s Twitter feed. I suppose in order to be consistent with her latest Tweets which don’t name Flack but merely discuss suicide we shouldn’t necessarily expect that. If we’re to be completely fair to Creasy, then in her case integrity and consistency would simply constitute her raising the issue of male victims of domesitc violence and the support services on offer, either at the time of Flacks’ arrest or sometime afterwards. Of course, being a misandrist, she completely fails to manage this either. As per Phillips, she instead doubles-down and posts about “male entitlement” in the context of domesitc violence.

Unfortunately for Creasy, she actually appeared on flagship BBC politics show “Question Time”, in Croydon just two days after Sargeant’s suicide. The appearance featured Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore brilliantly highlighting the mistreatment of Creasy’s party colleague which led to his suicide. Moore then highlighted the cause of such tragedies, during which time Creasy was seen sitting next to him pulling silly faces! Creasy did at least acknowledge Sargeant’s death as a tragedy, but cowedly said she “refused to discuss individual cases”. She then completely took the side of accusers, citing the need to believe them, completely dismissing the idea of questioning their story and the need for evidence. She also dismissed the idea of witch hunts and false allegations. For her piece de resistance, Creasy then chose to highlight the case of Bex Bailey, an individual who alleged she was sexually assaulted at a Labour event in 2011. This of course utterly contradicts Creasy’s pledge of less than a minute previous, not to discuss individual cases, thus instantly breaking her own promise and proving her hypocrisy in front of an audience of millions.

Creasy failed to acknowledge Sargeant’s passing on her Twitter account, therefore indicating she’d been forced to address to issue on TV solely due to others raising it and she was clearly resisting brining up the case voluntarily.

So in conclusion: All three of the Labour party feminist super-fans of Love Island paid tribute to Flack (albeit with one not actually naming her explicitly). All three have completely ignored Flack’s domesitc violence against her male partner, pretending it never happened. This is course would never have occurred were the gender reversed. And finally, all three used Twitter to pay show infinitely more support to a known female abuser who took her own life and had been charged by the police, than to an accused male party colleague who had merely been suspended pending an investigation.

It’s worth noting that in addition to Flack’s serious domestic violence, her suicide is now the fourth case linked to the Love Island television show, making a total of five incredibly serious tragedies. One dare say that were there a male oriented show with even half this tally there would have been countless feminist calls to ban the broadcasts, no doubt citing the supposed “toxic masculinity” causing such tragedies. Of course, seeing as feminist superfans love the show and it had a stunning and brave presenter who attacks male partners, then there’s no issue, just like there’s still no issue with a lack of support for male victims of domesitc violence in the eyes of these three awful politicians.

Apologies for the lack of HEqual content lately. Articles take some time to research and write and unforeseen family matters have had to take priority until recently.

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