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Editorial
With the Labour Government on its last legs, and with daily leaks from senior Labour ministers and officials that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is "damaged goods" the rejuvenated Conservative party under David Cameron is aggressively hitting the stump across the capital canvassing support of Londoners ahead of the European elections, which are widely seen as a barometer of the standing of the main parties.
Last weeks press was focused on the Spring conference of the Conservative party with a photo of a group of white middle class men circling leader David Cameron with commentators saying that Cameron had "back-tracked" on his commitment to introduce more women, ethnic candidates and gay Conservatives to become MP's and take office generally in his party.
The Tories currently have 17 women MPs at Westminster and 178 men. "The team Cameron has put together to spar with the government over the economic crisis is all-male, suggesting that when times get tough women get squeezed out" wrote The Sunday Times editor Margaret Driscoll.
But the demographics of the Conservative Party is changing rapidly with the number of candidates at the forthcoming European elections who are women and from an ethnic background not massively rising but are being
given "winnable" campaigns to contest.
One such candidate known for her energy and appetite to campaign for the party in the capital is the successful businesswoman and Barnet local councilor Marina Yanakoudakis. "Marina" who is a candidate for the Conservative party in the forthcoming European Parliamentary elections spoke to the London Daily News on the issue of the under representation of women in her party,
"Women have an important role to play in politics, with an approach which can be both powerful and compassionate, it is important they are encourage to enter into what has traditionally been seen as a mans world. David Cameron has shown he and the party support women by his support of the 2009 women MEP candidates"
Cameron's approach by not implementing a "positive discrimination"
approach is seen as delaying the influx of women into the ranks of the Conservative Party, with the Sunday Times saying:
"The Tory leader contends that a convincing win at the next election will raise the number of his party's women MPs to 55, but an analysis of the top 100 target seats suggests that only 26 have selected women. The jury is out on whether Cameron's grand project will get off the ground."
The Labour party introduced a list system into the selection process, which produced "drone-like" women who would parrot fashion say anything Labour HQ programmed into their DNA. Surely the Conservatives want to encourage independent thinking self confident women like Theresa May, Baroness Warsi, Theresa Villiers and the new intake like Marina Yannakoudakis for the European elections?
Cameron needs to encourage local parties to start looking at women and ethnic candidates, but only select individuals if they are good enough for the job, and not if they just fulfill a quota set by central office. photo credit: Cllr. Marina Yannakoudakis with the Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron.
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