This May be Tory feminism: The second woman PM is not Margaret Thatcher Mark II. As the second Conservative Prime Minister, it is hardly surprising that Theresa May is being compared to Margaret Thatcher. But Julie Gottlieb writes tracing the political ancestry on the basis of their common gender is misleading. In particular, she highlights May does not share Thatcher’s apparent rancour for feminism, and argues that we could be on the brink of discovering how feminist Toryism can work in practice. Credit: BBC R4 CC BY-NC 2.0 Is Britain’s second woman Prime Minister really the direct heir to Margaret Thatcher?
Theresa May has certainly been represented as such, and she has been measured against Thatcher’s towering but also heavily tainted legacy. The day before May walked into No. 10, Metro (Tuesday 12 July 2016) placed their vital statistics side by side in “Maggie V May: How They Compare.” The Thatcher factor looms large. The comparison will no doubt be made when such a rare and remarkable milestone is reached. Dark days for the Tories: The implications of the EU referendum for domestic party politics. The referendum debate has revealed deep fissures in the Conservative Party.
Sean Swan considers the different scenarios that might follow the vote, and writes that – in or out – it does not seem likely that the losing side will simply accept the referendum result as the end of the matter. Most analysis of the referendum has, understandably, focused on the economic and social consequences of an out vote. However, the implications for domestic party politics, especially for the Tories, might also be dramatic. The issues raised by the referendum are no more likely to be settled by the result that was the case in the 2014 Scottish Indyref.
Should there be an ‘out’ victory, there would be tremendous, and probably irresistible, pressure on Cameron to do what Salmond did when he lost a referendum – resign as both PM and party leader. Credit: Andrew Parsons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 But – and it is a major but – Brown’s succeeding Blair was a foregone conclusion. Win or lose, can David Cameron survive fallout from EU war? | Politics.
Shortly after Boris Johnson and Michael Gove declared that they would campaign for Brexit back in February, the former Tory leader William Hague seemed more preoccupied with the fate of the Conservative party than with Britain’s future relationship with the EU. “A sustained battle within a party can open wounds that take a generation to heal,” he wrote in a Daily Telegraph column. “Just look at Blair and Brown and the wreckage they left behind.” By suggesting that a split of that magnitude could be on the cards, Hague aimed to focus Tory minds. The former foreign secretary knew that, as the country approached the 23 June EU referendum, it was about to witness the Tory party playing out the final act of its decades-long internal war over Europe – but this time in public, and ferociously, for every voter to see. What concerned him most was not whether the electorate would decide to leave or stay in the EU, but whether the wounds inflicted in the process would ever heal. David Cameron is not the man to shoot the Conservative Eurosceptic dog
Nservative groupies – party factions and their vision for the future | Westminster Advisers. All parties have weird subterranean warrens of networks and clubs. They may not be visible from above ground (i.e. in the real world) but they are there. Some are bustling, some are cobweb filled and the roofs of some collapsed a long time ago. In contrast to the highly organised factions that populate the Labour landscape, such as Progress or the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Conservative party groupings are on the whole a bit more low-key. In fact, some academics have argued that historically Labour has factions whilst the Conservative party traditionally has had ‘tendencies’. The existence of, and affiliation with, various groups within the party should not necessarily be seen as being mutually exclusive.
The most obvious tendency at the moment is the Cameroons. Needless to say, the Cameroons are a relatively recent addition to the landscape. The 1922 Committee remains one of the oldest organisations and carries immense influence. Ten days that toppled Margaret Thatcher. Twenty five years ago next month Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister. Yes, it is now almost a quarter of a century since the longest-serving premier of the 20th Century was unceremoniously booted out of office. And even after all that time, her shadow still hovers over British political life: as a lodestar in the mythology of the Tory right; and as a hate figure for many on the left. But what if she had not exited the political stage in November 1990? It is one of the interesting "what ifs" of modern British history. For there was nothing inevitable about her departure. I have been re-examining the final days of Mrs Thatcher's government for a Radio 4 documentary to be broadcast on Sunday at 13.30 GMT.
Along with my colleague Rob Shepherd, we have spoken to many of the key figures in that final drama including Michael Heseltine, Ken Baker, John Wakeham, Ken Clarke, Chris Patten and John Whittingdale. Image copyright Getty Images Image copyright PA No holding back Damage limitation?
Ideology.