If you cant join them, beat them

Louise Mensch, Conservative MP for Corby resigns from her job for the sake of her family life.

It’s exhausting.

Another day, another story of a woman who has given up her ‘high profile’ career.

Exhausting is the effort needed to unpick these stories, to scrape off the media slap and consider the bare face of the facts. Why bother?  Well, we can understand deep-rooted perception by how people are portrayed in the media, and also we may just learn something about a better balanced life.

And my goodness you have to watch the journalists, because they care about this story only insofar as it fits around a point that they got up this morning already wanting to make. The available data is moulded around the journalist’s hypothesis with unwanted extras left lying on the cutting room floor.

The Telegraph Political bloggers have been vocal on this topic so I looked at their three posts.

Iain Martin, in his blog ‘The Louise Mensch Show was always going to end in tears’  tells the tale of the failure of a self-obsessed allrounder, a ‘blow up’ which he predicted coming. He sagely warns the PM to be more careful who he backs next time.  He employs buzz words to create drama – ‘careerism’ (twice), ‘Chick-Lit’,  along with nonsensical statements "Some seem to have been given the impression that politics would work around their needs .. with no need for any of that awkward business of mastering the Commons or honing a worldview.” 

Lord Norman Tebbitt’s blog, ‘The case of Louise Mensch is a good example of why the Tory grassroots have lost confidence in the national Party' questions today's relaxed approach to the office of MP, “It is the apparently casual attitude of Mrs Mensch towards the obligations she had undertaken which concerns me: it is as if these days being a Member of Parliament is no more than a job”.

Damian Thompson, Telegraph Blogs Editor, 'Louise Mensch quits. So why did she bother becoming an MP in the first place?' aims to incite anger against Mensch, “Louise is going to have to come up with something pretty convincing if she isn't going to leave people thinking: she got elected, got bored and flounced out” and employs mild threat to underline his point, “Corby Conservatives..may have a few messages to tweet back at her”.

For what it is worth, here is my take:

Empire State of Mensch

Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP who beat expectations in 2010 by doubling the long-hoped-for swing of the 13 year Labour seat of Corby and East Hants, has this week resigned from her post, following a long-time struggle to find the “best outcome” for her family.

Mensch, a graduate of Oxford University joined the Young Conservatives at the age of 14 and was selected as Parliamentary candidate for Corby in 2006. She was cited in the Insight Public Affairs ‘The Next Generation: Parliamentary Candidates to Watch’ in 2009, which celebrated the 2 million copies of her 12 novels, written since her first publishing contract at the age of 22.

Praised for her comment, “women can have it all, if they want it all”, Louise has found her life balance increasingly difficult to optimise since her divorce from her first husband in 2009, with whom she has 3 children now 4, 7, and 8, and marriage to new love Manhattanite and manager of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peter Mensch.

This year she aims to publish her 13^th novel, under her married name, “I was longing to brand myself with his name for a very long time. He's a living legend, and to be his wife is the greatest honour.”

Successful in anything she puts her mind to, Mensch certainly challenges any suggestion of politics being a Calling. When news of alleged youthful drug-taking broke in 2011 she assumed it would all be over, “There goes my career. I was like - oh well, easy come, easy go, political career.”

As well as the beloved new husband, three children, millions in the bank from her immensely popular novels and Parliamentary career, she has also recently launched a new social networking site - Menshn, which, rather foolishly, she claims is not inspired by her own name.  A “niche complement to twitter”, the site fixes three of twitter’s well publicised problems:  poor topic structure, follower reach, and offensive use.

She swung the Corby electorate, twitter’s loyal followers should be a walk in the park.

I think I might sign up.

(Thanks to GQ.Com for reporting)

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When you look at the news of Mensch’s resignation objectively, you see a highly intelligent, hugely successful individual who is understandably not happy with the sub-optimal situation of throwing herself across three different locations: her constituency, London and New York, and who has every possible opportunity to make a small change to fix it.

The fact is that anyone with options, determination and self-belief will simply step over obstacles in the way of optimal life satisfaction. The trick for employers is to make their offering the most attractive, with the least number of obstacles.

Lord Tebbitt. Being MP of Corby probably was ‘just a job’ and one that she was very good at when she brought her party to victory. A life in Politics does not have the appeal it once did, ambivalence is rife as a result of what has gone before.

As for loyalty, Iain, Mensch loyally called out that Cameron had done everything in his power as an employer to help her. As a 'Leading Political Commentator', why don’t you call upon Cameron to focus on the power of his own leadership to drive greater passion and numbers to his party to solve such retention and succession issues.

And Damian, Louise doesn’t have to convince anyone of anything. The facts are there. She didn’t ‘flounce’ out. She gathered her kids, got on a First Class flight to New York to live with the manager of the world’s coolest band where, undoubtedly, she will knock her latest endeavour out of the park.

Jealousy is a terrible thing and all three Telegraph blogs smack of ‘if you can’t join them, beat them.’

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