Tory men’s fury over rule that gives half of peerages to women
DAVID CAMERON faces a revolt from male Tory ex MPs after ruling that half of up to 40 new Conservative peers must be female.
They criticised him after claims that several retired Tory politicians are to miss out on Lords seats to be announced this month, to make way for up to 20 women peers.
Lords insiders say the ‘every other new Tory peer must be female’ diktat is a response to the Lord Sewel prostitutes-and-cocaine scandal. Sewel, a non-affiliated peer appointed to the Lords by Tony Blair, quit politics in disgrace.
Conservative sources say the Prime Minister believes that announcing 40 new Tory peers, with up to 30 of them male, would provoke a public backlash.
But it has led to protests from senior Tory politicians who claim they had been promised a peerage but will now miss out. ‘No 10 thinks there will be much less of a fuss if half the new peers are women,’ said a source. ‘But it has provoked complaints from some who thought they were on a promise.’ Tory women already tipped for a peerage include Michelle Mone, co-founder of the Ultimo lingerie chain, and named recently as Cameron’s ‘business tsar’; Debbie Wosskow, who set up the holiday home swap website, Love Home Swap; Cameron’s deputy chief of staff, No10 ‘gatekeeper’ Kate Fall; Iain Duncan Smith’s adviser Philippa Stroud; and former Tory MP Angie Bray.
Tory men tipped include former Foreign Secretary William Hague; ex Chief Whip Sir George Young; former Climate Change Minister Greg Barker; ex Science Minister David Willetts; and former chairman of the Commons Defence Select committee James Arbuthnot.
A veteran Conservative said: ‘The whole thing is absurd. Some of the women put forward are complete nonentities. And some of the men being turned down have first-rate brains and a wealth of experience. Nothing makes more of a mockery of Parliament than putting people in it who aren’t up to the job.’
In a move to defuse any controversy, the new Tory peerages will be announced in tranches, with about 20 expected shortly, followed by up to 20 more by next spring.