I don't think many people would mistake me for a Conservative supporter, but this story in today's Guardian, and the accompanying comment piece by Tory candidate Dorothy Luckhurst, have convinced me that no woman should consider voting for them.
Elizabeth Truss, selected to represent South West Norfolk last week, is now being threatened with deselection for failing to notify selectors that five years ago she had an affair with an MP. In her article, Luckhurst describes being deselected for becoming pregnant, within marriage, without consulting her constituency association. She has regularly been questioned on how she will manage her career and her children, while male colleagues are never quizzed on their private lives.
It's as if Tory associations are still living in the last century, when fathers had no involvement with their children and women gave up work when they had them. What business is it of theirs what a woman does in her private life, so long as it doesn't impact on her job? David Cameron can attempt to modernise the Conservative Party but sadly it seems that at grassroots level it is as misogynistic and outdated as ever.
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