Educating Theresa

Peter Hitchens writes:

In a sympathetic, nay laudatory interview with the Tory politician Theresa May in the Guardian on Monday 14th December, Deborah Orr notes ‘at one point she was described in her literature as having been educated at Wheatley Comprehensive. She was pulled up for it by the rightwing columnist and grammar-school obsessive Peter Hitchins, who pointed out that May had attended a private prep school until she was 13, before going to a state girls' grammar which went comp a couple of years after she had started there.’

Well, it is rather nice to be called a ‘grammar school obsessive’, even by someone who cannot spell my name, since this is pretty much true. I am obsessed with the irrational destruction of these great schools, and with the political and media class's refusal to admit it was a mistake.

But Mrs May (whose official biography in the current Dod's Parliamentary Companion still says that she attended Wheatley Park comprehensive), is obviously now on the Guardian's list of the great and the good, as that paper lines up with Mr Cameron's Blairite New Tory Party. It's worth noting this stuff as it happens.

Miss Orr writes gushingly of the Tory MP and Shadow Cabinet member, saying she wasn't going to write about her shoes, but ‘when May stepped into her office, though, after succumbing to the demands of the Guardian's photographer, she was so beautifully made-up, so fastidiously coiffed and so elegantly, stylishly dressed, that she might as well have been wearing a girl-power T-shirt. Then, as we settled cosily into a pair of armchairs, I clocked her scarlet, knee-length suede boots – soft, luxurious, ringed round the top with a cheeky double-row of brass studs – and my resolve simply fled. May is certainly not above working her look. She is fond of her clothes and her gimmick. Better to have high-profile shoes than low-profile policies. Better to have a girly, neutral ice-breaker than not.’

Other selections: ’May talks cogently and enthusiastically‘; ‘She is painfully aware that the greater proportion of women who have been in the house during her experience have been on the Labour benches, and she emphasises the need for more women in the Conservative ranks. All-women shortlists, once anathema to the Conservative party, are one of the tools she hopes will deliver this, and she is aware of the difficulties of combining parliamentary work with having a family.’

Interesting that. Check the files and you find that in the not-so-long-ago, Mrs May was describing all-women shortlists as 'an insult to women'. Not any more. Wouldn't it have been interesting to discover how and why she had changed her mind so completely? Is it the Guardian that has changed, or Mrs May? And the Tory Party? Would-be Tory supporters, and Cameron enthusiasts, please let me know.

I remember Mrs May as the Conservative candidate for North West Durham in 1992. She lived here in Lanchester for the duration. Today, well into December, North West Durham Constituency Labour Party genuinely does not know whether it is going to have a "shortlist" the length of the list of runners and riders in a horse race, or a candidate imposed by the National Executive Committee. At least one superb candidate well-known to me has refused to be part of the whole farcical proceedings. If Mrs May wants to see the all-women shortlist system in action, then she should take a trip down memory lane.