AMBER Rudd, the former Home Secretary, has said if she were Prime Minister, she would “fire all the men” and have an all-female Cabinet.
In an interview with ITV as part of its Acting PM podcast, Ms Rudd also expressed regret that the Tory Party no longer seemed to be a “welcoming place for Conservatives who are pro-Europeans”.
On what she would do with the Cabinet, she replied: “I'd fire all the men. I've decided I would have an all-female Cabinet. It's about time that we addressed the balance.
“There's been so many all-male Cabinets, although the last one was in 1992, but it still feels quite recent to me that still there's an issue with women getting into Cabinet. The current rate is just under 25% with David Frost's elevation…”
Ms Rudd said the Cabinet still felt “very much a boys club,” whereby women were overlooked. “The point is representation leads to policy changes; with an all-female Cabinet, we would address a lot of the issues that are being neglected at the moment.”
She claimed the evidence was that women, in general, tended to “work more consensually, more in coalition,” stressing: “So we'd have the first, all-female Cabinet under a female prime minister.”
The former Cabinet minister also bemoaned how there was now “no place for pro-European Conservatives” in her party.
“I know people who want to get selected for a seat have to show real Brexit enthusiasm to do so. That's a loss because there's a legitimate Conservative position, which is pro-European, not trying to get back into the EU, but fundamentally pro-European.
“And those people are not going to be part of the MP selection process in the future. Obviously, there are some of my former colleagues who are, and who've managed to stay and that's great, but it's quite different to having those views and staying as an MP to getting selected as an MP,” argued Ms Rudd.
She added: “I regret the fact the Conservative Party doesn't seem to be a welcoming place for Conservatives, who are pro-Europeans.”
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