More women should be brought on to the Tory party’s ruling board in the wake of the “Tatler Tory” scandal, a senior Conservative MP said today.
Bernard Jenkin called it “absurd” that just two of the board’s 22 members are female, claiming that more would prevent the “testosterone-fuelled hyper-competition” that leads to bullying.
The Tatler Tory scandal has seen activist Mark Clarke accused of bullying young volunteers, including Elliott Johnson, 21, who later committed suicide. Mr Johnson’s father has since claimed there is a “culture of bullying” in the party.
Complaints made by Elliott were allegedly not properly acted upon, and the Conservatives have launched an inquiry and review of the party structure.
Mr Jenkin said the party board “is very big. It’s far too big to be a proper board. No board on any public company or any public body would be that big. It is also absurd there are only two women out of 22. Any City board or public body board would have at least 30 per cent women. There is a case for bringing the Conservative party into the 21st century.”
The Standard reported in October how one female MP complained that the board was “packed with middle-aged white men”.
Mr Jenkin, who sits on the party’s powerful 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said having more women board members could help prevent future bullying.
He added: “Definitely it would. Most women don’t go in for this test- osterone-fuelled hyper-competition. It’s why women are so repelled by politics, why it’s so difficult to tempt women into politics.
“They don’t like the chummy semi-sexist attitude that pervades so much of politics.” Mr Jenkin said there was now “a chance for the Conservative party to set a good example and show that we’ve learnt from this terrible incident and we’re going to use the experience to improve things in the Conservative party.”
Elliott Johnson died in September after reportedly complaining to the party that he was being threatened by Mark Clarke, who ran an operation bussing around young volunteers to help the Tory election campaign.
Mr Clarke, who was once tipped as a future Cabinet minister by Tatler magazine, has since found himself at the centre of a series of lurid sex, bullying, harassment and blackmail allegations.
He strongly denies them all, but has been expelled from the Conservatives and banned for life.
Mr Johnson’s father Ray said yesterday that the party had a “culture of secrecy”, a “culture of denial” and a “culture of bullying”.
