Lib Dem conference: ‘more Kens’ need to ‘head back to Mojo Dojo Casa House’, MP says during speech

“More Kens” need to “head back to the Mojo Dojo Casa House”, a Lib Dem MP has said as she unveiled plans to double statutory shared parental pay in the UK.

Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokesperson, made the reference to the 2023 blockbuster Barbie as she argued that “not enough men” are taking leave when their babies are born.

She said that one reason for this is that many dads “simply cannot afford” to stop working, which is why the Lib Dems would double payments from £172.48 to £350 per week in the hopes of easing the financial burden on families.

In Barbie, ‘Kens’ represent all men - and a ‘Mojo Dojo Casa House’ is the term the main character Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, uses for his home.

The Lib Dems’ plans would also see shared parental leave increased from the current 37 weeks to 46 weeks, so that parents “can spend more time with their children”. Both of these changes would be expanded to apply to self-employed workers too, the party added.

Speaking at the annual Lib Dem conference, which is taking place this weekend in Bournemouth, Ms Wilson said: “We need to persuade more Kens in this world to take a short break from doing ‘beach’ and head on back to the Mojo Dojo Casa House.” (In Barbie, ‘beach’ is Ken’s full-time job.)

“But I know that many dads do want to spend more time with their kids - they simply can’t afford it,” the MP continued. “So the Lib Dems will turbocharge parental leave, doubling pay so that new parents don’t have to rush back to work if they don’t want to, [and] extending it to cover the first full year of a child’s life.”

The Lib Dems also promised to make small-group tutoring to help pupils who have fallen behind in class a permanent fixture in England, pledging £390 million a year to help schools, sixth forms, and further education colleges carry out the plans.

Other proposals included giving a new “blue flag status”to rivers in Britain to protect them from sewage dumping, with funding to enforce the scheme to be raised via a so-called “sewage tax” on water companies that are continuing to pollute rivers.

Elsewhere, senior MP and former party leader Tim Farron vowed to “rip up” the the government’s controversial Illegal Migration Act “on day one” of a Lib Dem government.

He accused the Conservatives of being willing to “put victims of modern slavery at even greater risk if they think it will give them shallow political advantage,” and lashed out at Labour for being “too scared” to properly back those in need of refuge.

In contrast, he pitched the Lib Dems as a party not afraid to support those at risk “even and especially if it is not always popular to do so”, as he introduced a motion that would see survivors of modern slavery able to sue their traffickers in court. This was unanimously voted for.

The Westmorland and Lonsdale MP said: “We will scrap the absolutely appalling Illegal Migration Act in full – no caveats, no excuses, no cowardly backtracking. That Act gets ripped up on day one of a Liberal Democrat administration.

“And the Labour Party, slipping back into New Labour habits. Too scared of tabloids to risk being seen to be on the side of those in desperate need of sanctuary and liberation.”