Bravo Charlotte Leslie MP who seems to have come out of the woodwork as a Conservative Woman MP who is in fact conservative.
In Conservative Home she said, “liberating women to be who they really are means revering motherhood every bit as much as we respect Non-Executive Directors, MPs and women in board-rooms” and that “motherhood and career need not be mutually exclusive measures of success.
Real feminists should equally celebrate a woman’s unique and unreplicable role of giving birth, bringing up children and being a mother.”
Here the TCW editors reply:
Laura Perrins
How nice it is for Charlotte Leslie MP to point out that only women can give birth. And I certainly will leave it to her to referee the fight between the ‘real’ feminists and the ‘false’ feminists, as I am interested in neither.
Sadly, it really says a lot that we now live in the society where a female MP needs to point out that it is ‘wrong to look down at stay-at-home mothers.’
But then that such sentiments are necessary is as a direct result of statements made and policies implemented by her own party. I do hope Dave and George are reading but I doubt it.
Usually it is Kathy who is the more cynical one, but for me this all too little too late from the Conservative Party.
How convenient it is that this piece is written more than one year after the abolition of child benefit which disproportionately impacted on single-income families where one parent stays at home to care for the children.
And it comes one week after the budget which introduced the childcare benefit which will pay for the nannies of those earning up to £300,000.
I wonder what prompted such a piece? Is it because there is an election in the near future?
It is not surprising that there is not one policy suggestion such as strengthening the transferrable tax allowance and extending it to those who have had their child benefit removed.
This would help families decide themselves how to care for their children. But no, I suspect Ms Leslie MP believes we can be seduced with words. She is sorely mistaken and I hope we are not going to be subjected to more of this patronising nonsense in the future.
Kathy
As Laura says I am usually the more cynical observer. It comes with age and getting the ‘I’ve seen it all before’ mentality.
However in this case I am prepared to give young Charlotte the benefit of the doubt. She is without doubt brave to put her name down at all as a stay at home mother supporter.
Just think about the feminist thought control police in her own party she’s defying.
To start with her senior sister in the party Ms. E Truss quite clearly thinks that no women can be fulfilled unless she is toiling in the workplace.
And the official party line is that ‘the little blighters’, as Eleanor Mills described them last Sunday, should be packed off courtesy of generous tax allowances to an ‘ecole maternelle’ as soon as practically possible.
Yes, Charlotte Leslie MP, can see her ministerial ambitions consigned to oblivion now she’s put pen to paper on Conservative Home opinion; and just when there is a smidgeon of a hope that Dave might make it back to Number Ten.
Remember it was the Prime Minister himself who declared 2014 as the “year for women,” boasting that Britain would “lead the charge on women’s equality, on women’s empowerment, on the empowerment of girls and women worldwide.”
Somehow I don’t think it was stay at home mums he had in mind.
Lonely on the back benches it is not just ostracism from her own ranks she faces but the ridicule and venom of the Lib-Lab feminist pack too.
So, all in all I think Charlotte is pretty brave. If she decides she might well be ‘in for penny, in for a pound’, gets behind fairer family taxation reform and takes on the party heirarchy, then she will be more than brave. She will be a heroine.
