Female Tories are my enemy, says new Labour MP
A NEW Labour MP has been criticised after saying she will never be friends with a Conservative, and she regards female Tories as “an enemy to lots of women”.
Laura Pidcock, the 29-year-old MP for North West Durham, a self-declared feminist, told a Labour-supporting website she would not “hang out” with Conservative women because they are “no friends of mine”.
Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP, said: “She will make a great MP. How can she fail with her politics of hate and such a hands-over-the-ears juvenile attitude?”
Ms Pidcock was also taken to task by Kemi Badenoch, a newly elected Conservative MP, who said she was friends with Labour politicians and would be keen to work with female Labour MPS. She added: “If you’re in a position where all the people you know think and look like you, you have a problem.”
Ms Pidcock, a vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, said: “My very very initial reflections are that there are two basic types of Tory. You’ve got the ones… who are so blinded by their own privilege and have never experienced hardship, that they genuinely seem unable to see what it’s like in our communities.
“If they see someone in tears from the sheer weight of everything that’s being piled on top of them their reaction is, ‘oh you’re being very dramatic’.
“The other type is completely ideologically driven. They seem genuinely to believe capitalism is the best way to improve society and it blinds them to the evidence under their nose.”
She added: “Whatever type they are, I have absolutely no intention of being friends with any of them. The idea that they’re not the enemy is simply delusional when you see the effect they have on people.”
In her maiden speech, Ms Pidcock said the Palace of Westminster dated from “a time when my class and my sex would have been denied a place in it, because we are deemed unworthy”.
Ms Badenoch said some Labour MPS “genuinely believe that we are vermin”.
Will Quince, Tory MP for Colchester, said: “This is such a disappointing attitude. Labour MPS are the opposition not the enemy.”