Political scientists and psephologists (people who study elections) have remarked on a slightly different but related condition of the ‘Shy Tory’ to understand how pollsters have more than once failed to predict a Conservative Party win-in 1992 and now again in 2015. Marxists have tried to explain such problems away with the epistemological panacea of ‘false consciousness’. Certain expressions come to mind, like ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’, and ‘don’t be your own worst enemy’. įor many it grates sharply that these are women who got their chances in politics and in the Conservative Party thanks to the achievements of modern feminism. The Conservatives have followed suit (or should we say, frock), with 48 Tory women holding seats in the last Parliament, while on 7 May this year 68 of the 331 elected Conservative MPs were women, nine of whom are in the David Cameron’s new Cabinet. While in the lead-up to the 1997 General Election Labour’s Tessa Jowell remarked that “ There are more Members of Parliament called ‘John’ than there are honourable ladies in this House,” the gaping gender gap was soon filled with ‘Blair’s Babes’ after Labour’s landslide. Women are finally winning the numbers game. Indeed, we are just a couple of years off the centenary of women having the right to sit in the House of Commons -the first to take her seat was the American-born Conservative Nancy Astor in 1919.
Even less so does suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst play to any of these stereotypes, but she nonetheless ended her days as the Conservative Party candidate for Whitechapel and St George, a fact that today’s Conservative Women’s Organisation is only too pleased to celebrate on their website.
How do we make sense of political women on the Right, especially those strong formidable women who defied stereotypes of the domestic drudge who would never dream of voting otherwise than her ‘man of the house’, the meek housewife very much at home in patriarchy and the paragon of family values, or the well-heeled and usually titled socialite exercising her power behind the throne? Margaret Thatcher was never convincing as her husband Denis’ domestic goddess, though she tried hard to project herself as the household budgeter projected onto national level, consumer of all things M&S, and breakfast cook extraordinaire.
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