This week marks the climax of David Cameron's vaunted "first 100 days" of leadership. How to mark the event? Well, after wooing everyone from green activists, farmers and Eurosceptics to Bob Geldof and Location, Location's . . . Kirstie Allsopp, Cameron picked this climactic moment to explain his "family values" to the Equal Opportunities Commission over coffee and Danish at the Commonwealth Club.
The chair of the EOC, Jenny Watson, soon bared her fangs: at the current rate it would take 400 years to get equal numbers of men and women MPs in the Tory party, she sneered. The pollster Deborah Mattinson cheered Cameron for his "presentation rating" in a recent News of the World poll (39 points above Gordon Brown) but wagged her finger on "issues", "trustworthiness" and "would he make a good PM?" (below Brown on all counts). "It's not just about looking the part," she frowned. Cameron nodded like a chastened child, the knot in his shiny, pale blue tie suddenly looking very tight.
This was as nasty as it was going to get, though. The assembled throng, mostly women of a certain age wearing badges announcing organisations with the words "Voice", "Choice" or "Opportunity" in their titles, should not have been an easy ride. But they were obviously feeling magnanimous - and perhaps, bizarrely, a little maternal. Frequent references to Cameron's status as a new father (which had this usually sentimental member of the electorate reaching for the sick bag) were lapped up.
Comradely laughter broke out over the NoW poll finding that 54 per cent of the electorate believed Brown would dodge buying a round of drinks, while only 21 per cent thought Cameron would do so. A ringing endorsement if ever there was one. ("I promise to read the News of the World more often," beamed the nation's new favourite drinking companion, sounding like a high court judge.)
As Cameron took to the mike there was more cooing at the mention of "Arthur" and "Ivan" (no qualifiers required, it seemed), a little light-hearted product placement for Smythson and a few well-received jokes about the lady of the house being in gainful employment ("And so she said, 'Well, if one of us is going into politics, then one of us had better have a proper job!'"). The wares were then laid out in the vaguest terms: financial support for childcare choices, increased legal protection for women's careers, more pay transparency.
There were questions, but nothing that caused more than a passing flush of the cheeks (somebody get him some green-tinted foundation). The TUC went on the attack about alleged Tory plans to block parental leave for same-sex couples. Cameron claimed ignorance until an aide passed a note to the platform. It was all a misunderstanding! The Tories had just wanted to test the limits of the bill in case random people were trying to pass themselves off as parents.
Similar denials were issued in response to a cross question about getting more women from ethnic minorities into seats. Ah yes, this would definitely be happening - just not quite sure how yet. One clear policy line emerged repeatedly, at least. Here it was, the line of least interference: "We've got to stop telling families how to live their lives." A Cameron government would not impose choice: it should be equally valid and worthwhile for a woman to work or be a stay-at-home mother.
It was all going fine until the final question, when Jenny Westaway, of the Fawcett Society, leapt in with: "David Cameron, are you a feminist?" The flush reached the luscious hairline and bluster issued forth: "Er, I don't really know what it means any more . . . But I suspect probably not."
The audience, inflated with goodwill seconds earlier, bridled. Wasn't this the man who had just been saying that the lack of women MPs is a waste of talent and that one of his aims is to "make sexual inequality history"?
Never mind, Dave, there are probably at least another 900 days to go until the election. Plenty of time to read The Second Sex.
