Top 60 Jo Swinson Quotes

If you look at the role models that are out there, the women that tend to be photographed tend to be actresses and models, whereas the men are often in the media because of what they do in terms of business and sport.

Much of the responsibility to get more women elected is down to political parties. I am proud that a third of Lib Dem MPs are women, and I know we must work harder still to spot and nurture talented women at all levels in our party.

Much of political decision-making concentrates power in the hands of those already inside the circle, who tend to be men. Excluding women may not be the intention, but when they are not invited into the room where decisions are made, you can see how it happens.

While the problems facing the country are huge, it is in times of great disruption that we can make the most important changes to our society and help to rebuild our fractured, broken politics.

We have a massive shortage of engineers and one of the big glaring holes is that we have so few women doing engineering – it’s less than 10 per cent of the workforce.

I respect everyone’s right to their own religious beliefs, but for me, this cannot extend to our education system treating some people’s lives and identities as if they are somehow less worthy of respect or love.

There are five main barriers to women entering politics – I like to think of them as the five Cs: cash, caring, culture, confidence, and the closed club.

I believe there are millions of people across the country who are crying out for someone to stand up for liberal values.

It’s very hard for politicians to ignore even just a handful of letters about the same issue.

I love Harriet Harman, she is a supporter of women of all parties, a kind word, a friendly voice, and this country is lucky to have her.

The rise of populism has steadily coalesced movements of millions of people around its divisive us-against-them rhetoric, motivating so many more people to become active political campaigners and party members to champion the case for liberal democracy.

I joined the Lib Dem party at the Freshers’ Fair at the London School of Economics.

I want to stay in the European Union which is the best trade deal we could possibly have, but we need to call out racism.

I’m perhaps not the most tribal of politicians. Working in a mature and adult way where you recognise what your shared goal is and you manage to work towards that… that is not something which I think would be particularly more difficult with Labour than it is with the Conservatives.

I have ruled out Coalitions with Brexiteers because it’s so fundamentally opposed to our values.

Shared parental leave is good for dads. Looking after their newborn on their own is a unique learning experience.

My five years’ experience working in small businesses and a multi-national company have helped me as an MP to understand the challenges that businesses face, however the bottom line is that it’s up to constituents to judge whether you are good enough to do the job.

I think it’s been lovely the way people have been really supportive in parliament of my pregnancy.

I rage when Boris Johnson is more interested in sucking up to Donald Trump than standing up for British values of decency, equality and respect.

Far from the quick and easy exit that Leave campaigners once promised, Brexit has become mired in its own internal contradictions.

You look at the sports pages and you’d often be forgiven for thinking women didn’t do sport.

If there was a Liberal Democrat government, there clearly would be women in the Liberal Democrat Cabinet.

In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.

Politics now is fractured. The rising tide of nationalism and populism threatens to consume our politics. Whether it is Trump or Putin abroad, or Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage at home, our political order is increasingly dominated by forces that seek to divide us.

I have no limits to my ambition for the Liberal Democrats.

I knock on lots of doors, but you don’t reach everyone that way – Twitter is just one of many ways of keeping in touch.

Our country deserves a party that isn’t afraid to say immigration is a good thing, or to say that Donald Trump is racist, or to admit that we have an economic system that is fundamentally broken for too many people and is breaking our planet too.

My experience in government is there is a whole host of unintended consequences you have to think through. I can’t un-know that, I find it harder now to offer simple solutions.

I loved reading. I was one of those kids who was supposed to go to bed but had a torch under the duvet. That love of reading stayed with me.

We need more men to talk about their experiences of being a dad with colleagues, friends and family. It shouldn’t be surprising to hear about men being good fathers and it’s one of the most powerful ways we can counter the harmful ‘hapless dad’ stereotype.

One of the initiatives I have pursued in Parliament has been to make it easier for the public to see what their MPs do in the House of Commons by removing the ban on Parliamentary filming appearing on YouTube or similar web sites.

So when your sister or your friend is standing there and moaning about whether she looks really fat, and actually she looks gorgeous, tell her so and support each other.

A girl born in Drumchapel in Glasgow has just as much right to good health and the opportunities provided by a good education as a Surrey stockbroker’s son.

To take on the forces of nationalism and populism, we need to rally a liberal movement that offers a positive, alternative vision for the kind of country we want to be.

We need to achieve a change in the media and in the way women are pressured to conform to a narrow image of beauty – it’s a lofty ambition but it’s important to make a start.

Publishing parental pay benefits will let employers show that they’re family-friendly and enable them to better attract talent, potentially spurring on some very healthy competition.

Having a child is difficult enough already, bringing with it a whole range of wonderful challenges, and we shouldn’t be trying to guilt parents into ‘there is just one way to do it’.

Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I’m in Westminster and the other half I’m in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.

If we want a Parliament that understands people’s lives when it takes decisions, it needs to be representative of society, which includes having MPs who are parents of small children – both mums and dads.

One of the things I love most about Lib Dem members is that for all our policy disagreements, we agree on why we’re Lib Dems in the first place.

I want to lead the Liberal Democrats so that we can build a liberal movement to stand up to those nationalist forces and stop Brexit, then transform our broken economy so that it is focused on the long-term and works for both people and our planet, tackling poverty and averting climate crisis.

Politicians should be judged on their actions, rather than necessarily their views on scripture.

When I was pregnant during my time in Parliament, I was frequently asked by the media how I would manage being an MP and a mum, as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive.

Over the course of history, the answer to nationalism has been liberalism, and I believe it can be the answer again.

I’m a massive feminist, but I think it’s a little unfair on the other sex saying they’re not in it to change the world.

Those fundamentally liberal values – openness, inclusion, internationalism – are what truly represent the best of Britain, and it’s those values that I’m determined to fight for as leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But I don’t feel that as a politician I’m hugely different. Obviously I have a different set of experiences that chime with experiences that many of my constituents have. I think I essentially still have the same set of values and the issues that are important to me don’t seem to have changed hugely.

For so many in the UK, the social contract is broken – the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll reap the rewards. Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies are just as capable of fixing the social contract as they are to weaken it further.

My mum used to send me cuttings from the local paper about people who’d got married as a kind of ‘hint hint’. But then there was one cutting about my home seat’s boundary changes, and how it might be good for the Liberal Democrats, and I knew this was an opportunity.

A book I often refer to by Naomi Klein is called ‘No Is Not Enough’. It’s not enough to be against something. You have to actually be for something. A better alternative. For me, that’s about transformation.

Equalities issues are a key part of the Liberal Democrats and under my leadership we would push for them at every opportunity – whether in government or not.

The piece of legislation that I’m so excited and delighted to be doing is shared parental leave.

I still have a good girl deep inside, but also recognise that it’s worth saying things people will disagree with or get annoyed.