Just a wee domestic

It looks more and more as if Tories down south don't really understand how to deal with real life.

We've been told by several Tory grandees over the weekend that a male MP pushing a woman against a pillar, then grabbing her by the neck and shoving her out of the fancy hall where the Tories were meeting is nothing to make a fuss about. Pretty justified, according to quite a few Tories - sadly, some of them women. Apparently, the woman involved (but not the other women with her) could have been concealing a weapon, despite the fact that she was in evening dress and wearing a sash that proclaimed for all to see that she was not a terrorist but a climate protester. Not to mention that the security must have been crap for her and her pals to get in in the first place.

Then we heard that one of the candidates to be prime minister had a bust-up with his girlfriend in her flat, so loud that the neighbours called the police. First of all, there's this question: when the hell did this man find the time to get in tow with a woman who is not his wife and then move in with her, when every other MP seems to have been chained to his or her seat in Westminster? Not that I expect a response. And of course, it wasn't a big deal, this bust-up, and quite definitely nobody's business except theirs, according to members of the Tory party, even if the woman was shouting at him to 'get off me.' And anyway, the neighbours had no right reporting this. It was private. There are a few women around who could tell us what 'private' means in the setting of domestic abuse.

In both of these cases, I'm going to suggest a solution: contact Police Scotland.

Police Scotland has a Violence Reduction Unit, which has - for years now - been doing excellent work in reducing domestic abuse among other forms of violence. One of the rules of their programme is: don't dismiss assaults as 'just a wee domestic.'

It looks as if the Violence Reduction Unit's very successful work in reducing knife crime is being taken up by police forces down south, especially in Greater London.

Maybe they could have a look at what Scotland is doing to reduce domestic abuse too. They might learn something.