THE SUBJECT of the conference was Winning the Women’s Vote and Nicholas Soames, Shadow Defence Secretary, attacked his brief like a sporting schoolboy lumbered with playing a female role in the end of term review. Slapping a few remarks about plucky female Service personnel into his generic “our marvellous troops” address was like trying to feminise his magnificent manly bulk with a blonde wig and feather boa.

The female voter at present is like a traduced lover, disappointed that the man she idolised has turned out just like all the rest. Partly to hurt him, but also because she fancies something new, she is sitting on her bar stool weighing up the talent. Only 36 per cent of women say they will vote Labour this year, compared with 42 per cent in 2001, and 63 per cent of women distrust the Prime Minister. All my women friends express it thus: “I can’t bring myself to vote for Blair, but there seems no alternative.”

In short, women are gagging for it: all the Conservative Party has to do is turn up in a nice suit, listen politely, tweak a few outer erogenous zones and they are on a promise. But just how far they have to go was apparent at the Conservative Women’s National Conference on Thursday.

Let us try to pass over the fact that of nine speakers, seven were men: how could it be otherwise with just 14 Conservative women MPs, only two of whom are on the front benches? But the likes of David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, Tim Collins, the Shadow Education Secretary, and Howard Flight, the deputy Tory chairman, were uncomfortable enough addressing their female party faithful, let alone wavering women voters. How awkward their body language, how patronising their jokes, how puzzled – if not peeved – by the brief.

But then it took Pamela Parker, the outgoing Conservative Women chairman and an energetic feminist revolutionary, years to get visiting Cabinet ministers to do any more than pat her members on the head for their fund-raising. Now she’s training them to say “women” rather than “ladies”, but to little avail.

No doubt James Gray, the Shadow Countryside Minister, would regard the term frightfully ungallant. His speech began, as did three of the others, with jocular reference to his wife: “She says I know as much about female psychology as she knows about nuclear fission.” But at least Mr Gray is tall and funny, in a posh, bumbling Boris Johnsonesque way. As he was raging about the hunt ban I bet I wasn’t the only one imagining him in riding breeches: “Where’ve they been hiding him?” the woman to my left exclaimed fruitily.

The rest offered no such distractions. Bombastic David Davis had us pleasantly agitated about asylum and immigration. Geeky Tim Collins got heavy on truancy and children’s ignorance of British history. Only Tim Loughton, the Shadow Health and Children’s Minister, actually showed any understanding of a modern female agenda. But then maybe some in his audience weren’t ready for it. When he said the party must accept that 40 per cent of babies are born out of wedlock some older ladies behind me tutted. When he suggested parental leave could be taken by fathers too, one remarked “utterly ridiculous”.

Mrs Parker runs a business exporting engineering equipment to countries such as Iran. Dealing with traditional Middle Eastern men, she says, has been excellent preparation for talking to the dinosaurs of Central Office. She sent Michael Howard a 100-page document outlining how women have changed since 1997, have greater spending power, education and independence than ever before.

But the message is sinking in very slowly. Since 1997, what used to be a female agenda – childcare, work-life balance, parenting – has shifted into the mainstream of public discourse. Tony Blair can talk that talk, as he proved on Woman’s Hour this week, in the easy, uncondescending style of a man who married his equal.

Yet at the CWNC, the visiting shadow ministers seemed to underestimate their audience. Mostly over 55, Aquascutum-wearing and with worrying hairspray habits these women may be. But there were former mayors and constituency chairmen in their ranks. And almost every woman I spoke to had at some point tried – and failed – to become a Tory candidate. Chairing the sessions were glamorous, energetic and appealing Conservative women: any sensible party would have found them safe seats in a trice.

Women now run a quarter of UK businesses and are starting new companies at twice the rate of men: but where are their Tory businesswomen champions in Parliament? Young women under 25 seem to me natural Conservative voters. They are materialistic, tough and with limitless ambition, yet two thirds of them say they will not vote at all in the next election. They would have sniggered at the Cabinet ministers who spoke on Thursday, but found something to admire in Pamela Parker and Co.

As Nicholas Soames ended his speech and that famous description of him making love “like a wardrobe falling on top of you with the key sticking out” receded from my head, Mrs Parker gave a vote of thanks. Many years ago, she told him, when she tried, unsuccessfully, to find a seat, her great ambition was to be the first woman Defence Secretary. Soames gave a self-satisfied smile, as if he were an Olympic athlete listening to some jogger’s dreams. And therein, you thought, lies all the Conservatives’ problems with women.

janice.turner@thetimes.co.uk

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