Cameron standing up for women? Not likely
Richard Corbett, deputy leader of the Labour MEPs, responded with incredulity to David Cameron's comments bemoaning the lack of women MPs.
Richard said:
"While Mr Cameron complains that he needs more women MPs, he has threatened his one and only female MEP with deselection - leaving an entirely middle-aged male corpus.
"And why? Because his one woman MEP, along with many of her colleagues, is refusing to fall on her sword as he demands. She is not willing to break her manifesto promise to stay in the mainstream European centre-right, simply because Mr Cameron wants to appease the eurosceptics.
"David Cameron is developing a worrying habit of telling the public simply what he thinks they want to hear.
"It's all well and good to talk about women parliamentarians, but if he's so keen to alienate the one woman MEP he's already got, he is hardly going about it the right way."
Mr Cameron made his comments on improving numbers of women holding elected office at an Equal Opportunities Commission event on 13 March 2006.
He has pledged to withdraw the Conservative MEPs from the EPP-ED group within the European Parliament, and that suggested that any MEP who did not follow this move could be deselected.
Caroline Jackson is the only woman Conservative MEP out of 27.
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© 2003-2006 Richard Corbett MEP