Why Tory Women Lose out to Favourite Sons
Evening Standard
David Cameron has made his push for a big increase in the number of female candidates hugely symbolic. But he may come to regret this because it's going to be much harder than he thinks.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. More women would mean an instant makeover for the Tories. The party would immediately look younger, fresher and 'nicer'. They would mask the fact that, far from being on a modernising mission, Cameron's ambition to be our 19th Old Etonian prime minister actually takes British politics back 50 years. But, as we veterans of the Labour gender wars of the 1980s could have told him, most men in politics will do almost anything to advance the cause of women except actually stand aside for one. Cameron seems to think that merely exhorting his party to select more women will do the trick. The Labour Party experience is that nothing short of compulsion works. All-women shortlists gave local parties no choice. Cameron's latest wheeze (having more women on shortlists) will still offer local parties a get-out, and we are likely to see more of what the Tory party is currently experiencing.
There are already more women being shortlisted but, when it comes to the crunch, local parties choose a man. Furthermore, Cameron's initiative is essentially 'top-down'. In the Labour Party in the 1980s there were considerable numbers of party members who actually believed in more female representation - and we put pressure on the leadership. It is difficult to see how the process can work in reverse, particularly in a party whose average member is over 60; and, anyway, securing more women MPs requires a level of interference by headquarters in local parties that even the most modern-minded member instinctively resists.
The truth is that most local constituency parties have a 'favourite son', often a council leader who has been nursing the seat for years. It is asking too much to expect him - after years of delivering leaflets and doing all the other tedious tasks associated with local political activity - to voluntarily step aside for some slick young female lawyer or businesswoman from London. The Conservatives' elderly membership demonstrated considerable daring in selecting Cameron, so he may think that they are ready for even more radicalism. But he may find that they have now exhausted their appetite for innovation in those they choose to represent them.
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