Singular life
Lady Macbeth syndrome
Petronella Wyatt
Anew Centre for Policies Studies pamphlet has attacked the Tory party for its sexism and failure to chose women can- didates. One of the authors is my friend Tessa Keswick, the CPS's chairman, who is absolutely the ne plus ultra of the distaff set. Mrs Keswick would, in the words of Raymond Chandler, have a monk doing high kicks through stained glass.
This is precisely the trouble. I refer not to monks running amok because as far as I know Mrs Keswick does not know many. What I mean is that there are practically no other Tory women like her (an excep- tion is Baroness Buscombe and then there is the ravishing raven-haired Patricia Rawl- ings, MEP). Female Tories, by and large (and some are very large), look and behave the way Old Labour ones once did. They resemble the leaders of Soviet women's tank corps only with less dress sense. They are most usually attired in massive pieces of sackcloth, minus the ashes, of course, because they disapprove of the disgusting habit of smoking.
They disapprove of everything. In politics these women are less liberal than Felix Dzerzhinsky the head of the Chehka whose nickname was 'Iron Felix'. These are Iron Felicias. I have sat beside them at Tory Party Conferences. Or tried to. Each takes up two chairs. During the Home Secre- tary's speech they hiss to each other when the poor man fails to call for the return of capital punishment. Their shouts of 'bring back the rope' are varied only by 'castrate homosexuals' or 'send back the blacks'.
It is the Lady Macbeth syndrome. Women are slower, generally, than men to become riled but when they do they end up sitting beneath the guillotine counting sev- ered heads.
No wonder, then, that Central Office is chary of putting them in the House of Commons. Talk about frightening the hors- es. These lady horses would terrify the vot- ers. Never mind the failings of Mr Hague and the flailings of Archer and Ashcroft, the party would never be elected again.
The idea of women quotas, moreover, is distinctly unTory. It is hardly something that would have appealed to Edmund Burke. Quotas are for the Labour party and deranged social workers. They are not part of the Conservative canon. It's too loaded already. But why is it, you may ask, that so many Iron Felicias are attracted to the ConserVa- tive party, and so few Pouting Patricias. It is not only because becoming an MP nowa- days seems to preclude an active sex life. It is because the Iron Felicias won't have them. When the only attractive female can- didate in the last election, Elizabeth Noel, was selected to fight a constituency it just happened to be Tony Blair's.
It isn't Tory men who most dislike choos- ing women candidates, it is the women on the selection committees. With regard to their own sex they think and act like the least pleasant characters out of a Jane Austen novel. They see other woman as rivals. I recall one such female saying to me, 'Why should I help a woman whom my husband would find attractive.' Besides, a male MP, would be far better for young Charlotte or Zoe who, after three years of appearing in the diary pages of Count?), Life, still hasn't managed to become engaged.
Where daughterless, they fantasise about the prospective male MP as their lover, as nuns are said to fantasise about Jesus Christ. As Tory husbands are so emasculat- ed these days their wives sublimate their sexual urges. They long for those things that decorate the backs of porcupines and in as large a number (there are two words for them, one being quills). Two general elections ago a nice-looking male friend of mine with no political experience was cho- sen to fight a safe seat which he went on to win. At a subsequent celebration in the constituency, I heard one of the women who had been on the selection committee say to another, 'I thought that if he wouldn't do for any of my gels, he might do for me!' One wonders how that would stand up in Central Office.
And you did all this with a table-spoon . . . very impressive, Reg!'
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