If it didn’t drive me to laughter, it would drive me to despair. Every time muddled Conservative bossy-boots try to be modern, they just get into a deeper tangle. Will they never learn?
Why don’t they just go and join Labour – or the Lib Dems for that matter? They clearly don’t mind belonging to a party whose name bears no relation to it precepts.
Remember those concepts, choice and freedom, that the Conservative Party used to stand for?
Remember that anything to do with enforcing equality is socialist territory, or that Conservatives are not in the business of telling people how to think? No?
Baroness Anne Jenkin and Brooks Newmark MP clearly don’t. Look no further than their risible demand for more female parliamentary candidates.
It’s not for better quality candidates mind you, nor for ones with a bit of experience up their sleeve. No – just more women for the sake of … political correctness, it must be.
I am unfair. They have a theory, you see, as to why there are still relatively few females in the House of Commons. And, please mark, it is just nothing to do with choice or personal preference but all to do with women’s thwarted or repressed aspirations. Poor old us.
For, “The expectation that cripples many women’s opportunities remains the one which ties them to childcare and home making.” And, “Sharing family tasks should be the norm, not the exception”.
So we have it. The Pill never happened and women aren’t snatching all the university places. Women don’t dominate the teaching, medical and veterinary professions. Sorry I forgot. I am only surprised the word patriarchy did not rear its ugly head.
Now it is the Conservative Party’s job to liberate us. And while they are about it, they will be prescriptive about personal choice.
When did that become Conservative policy?
Of course, silly me, it is just the final step of the Conservatives’ labourisation (sorry, modernisation) programme.
Never mind that some members are still struggling with:
Step One: God grant me the courage to avoid the colour blue;
Step Two: and only to mention Margaret Thatcher in strictly historic terms and redefine her as a feminist pioneer;
Step Three: God give me the serenity to enthusiastically back Harriet Harman’s Equalities Act that T. May signed off, pushing for positive discrimination all the way;
Step Four: and to prescribe equality of opportunity and parity of outcome in education a la Prof. Ebdon, even if it means taking away children from their mothers at birth and consigns my children to a lousy school nowhere near where we live.
Now they are to be confronted with a new tenet:
Step Five: God help me to redefine Conservative culture in feminist terms: to liberate mums from motherhood, to make men wash up, cook and mind the kids.
In the absence of God never fear, the Conservative Thought Police will be there.
Mr Bernard Jenkin I hope you are attending.
For yes, leading this cultural revolution is your wife, Baroness Jenkin, so thoughtfully ‘liberated’ into a peerage for, I guess, helping her party?
And, generous soul that she is, she’s determined to help those ‘many talented’ (but still repressed) women get over the ‘countless unreasonable disadvantages that still beset’ them.
She has the ‘gender equality’ academic, Dr Rosie Campbell from the uber left wing Birkbeck College to help with the lingo. Now Dr Rosie’s survey data has told her that women voters of all parties are more concerned about gender equality than men there is no looking back.
That sex differences are not self evident proof of widespread sex discrimination; that policies intended to promote sex equality at best have little impact and at worst are counterproductive, as another more sceptical academic, Dr Catherine Hakim has found, clearly did not enter their calculations.
However, not to let facts get in the way of a good story, perhaps we should just be thankful that Anne and Brooks concluded that no new laws or punishments (punishments?) are required to stop those who stop women from missing out on their potential. How kind.
So exactly what are they proposing, ‘in order to move forward, ….. to deliver a significant increase in the number of women candidates selected in seats that the partyexpects to win’?
How will they bring about that ‘wholesale change of attitudes’ on gender equality they are sure is needed?
Never fear, they have a plan.
First women must become more visible to have a role model effect. (Yes they do say that). So what about a plethora of peeresses, not just Anne? Load the upper chamber in a pledge of positive discrimination patronage – Dave couldn’t disagree surely?
No, that’s not their master plan. It’s more modern than that. It involves a video.
It is time to marshall the Conservative Thought Police to ‘sell the new approach’ to those recalcitrant local associations that have the temerity to think they can chose the candidate they want. They will be made to watch it. As Conservative newspeak explains –‘without more buy-in from our Party membership we won’t be able to realise the change necessary to appeal to female voters in particular and to the electorate as a whole’.
And CCHQ has not been backward in coming forward. A re-education video is at hand that ‘makes it apparent that a woman candidate is just as well suited to the role’ and might ‘be better suited to constituency work than their male counterparts.’ Good God.
Well, the swivel-eyed loons and misogynists are clearly still out there and have not gone to UKIP after all.
No wonder Anne and Brooks deem it wise to have a safety measure in store too with, in all but name, all-women shortlists.
All I can say is good luck to them. They’ve certainly succeeded at something – putting off any independent minded Conservative woman from applying.
