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David Cameron told the Speaker's Conference on increasing female, ethnic minority and disabled representation in Parliament yesterday that his party would intervene in the final candidate selections before the general election to ensure more women become MPs. For some local activists it is contentious but from where I am standing as a Conservative candidate in Islington South and Finsbury the picture has already changed.
In the 1950s, one aspiring rural Tory candidate was told to forget it unless he bought a farm first. Here in north London in 2009, my predecessor was female. So are my two main opponents. My counterpart in Islington North, Adrian Berrill-Cox, has used a wheelchair all his life. Several Conservative candidates in nearby seats have ethnic minority backgrounds.
There are women Tory candidates in 28 per cent of seats selected so far (although my husband still has to endure the Denis Thatcher jokes, as though Mrs T was the only Tory woman MP ever). Entering Parliament will probably be Conservative women such as Harriett Baldwin and Andrea Leadsom, who not only have families and voluntary sector experience but also heavyweight backgrounds in investment. Black and minority ethnic candidates amount to seven per cent of the total, roughly the proportion at the last UK census.
That said, the meetings of local activists which choose candidates can be unpredictable. It is nothing like a conventional recruitment process. In all the main political parties, the council leader who has known all the local figures for decades naturally has an advantage. Bombarded, the selectors often go for someone who looks like the MP they are used to.
Sometimes that can work the female candidate's way. In Maidstone, where Ann Widdecombe had blazed the trail in her inimitable fashion for more than 20 years, being interviewed felt much easier than it did in seats that had only ever had male MPs.
Maidstone eventually chose Helen Grant, not only female but also from a mixed-race background. Across the estuary, east Essex Conservatives chose Priti Patel over white male competition for the safe seat of Witham.
Tory thinker Edmund Burke saw MPs not just as ambassadors from their own districts to Westminster but also as part of a body that collectively represented the nation: obviously we need more women and minorities in Parliament. The trouble is, most people don't get involved in politics.
The local volunteers who do make the effort to canvass voters and deliver leaflets, all part of the democratic process, deserve to be treated with respect. Imposing all-women shortlists on them before now would have been wrong.
But oppositions don't get to pick the general election date. In the final months, selections have always had to be speeded up. This time, that will mean going straight to shortlists which in some cases - not all - will be women-only.
I think there are enough good women and ethnic minority candidates still available to ensure selectors a decent choice. Those picked will justify the trust placed in them by the volunteers who keep the whole show on the road. Male or female, black or white, we've got an awful lot of evenings knocking on doors ahead of us.
Reader views (2)
Blair's Babes, Cameron's Chicks.
Meet the new boss...
- Tv, Hounslow, UK, 21/10/2009 13:06
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Here is a radical idea; why not let the local constituents elect their own candidates, rather than have people like you and others parachuted in on them?
I thought you Tories would lose my vote by letting me down over the EU Constitution vote, you probably still will, but you have in fact lost it over your insistence on perpetuating the corrupt socialists PC pandering policies.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 21/10/2009 12:14
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