Michael Howard must fancy himself as the 1980s crooner Robert Palmer, judging by the two strategically placed chicks flanking him at prime minister’s questions last week. One swooner was Julie Kirkbride, distinguishing herself as the new Conservative culture spokesman by revealing her favourite film star was Jack Nicklaus, which suggested her golf-crazed husband needs to get her out to Blockbuster more often.

The other was Theresa May, until last week party chairman and much-vilified Tory mod. Howard, the Folkestone rocker, demoted her, but she clung on as the only woman in the shadow cabinet. Women might as well face it: whether or not they are addicted to the love of their leader, their role in Mickey Howard and the Shadows is strictly backing vocals.

Superficially, May is suited to her role as airhead on air-guitar. As party chairman, in place of a political philosophy she offered a fascination for footwear: who needs Marx and Engels when you have Russell & Bromley? And now her obsession with kitten heels has moved on to Paul Smith coats. She blows in, draped in something louder than an air-raid warning. Even the jaw of her press minder crash-lands: triangles of red, brown, turquoise, black and much, much else, it is beyond any previous understanding of taste.

But let’s not fall into Howard’s sexist trap: the new Tory transport and environment spokesman must be good for more than shaking her maracas. She was one of the few players in Iain Duncan Smith and the Blockheads that fully grasped how loathed Tories were, and how badly they needed a new tune. IDS reportedly never forgave her for warning at their Bournemouth gig that they were seen as the “nasty party”. If he had listened rather than made an enemy of Central Office, he would still be leader.

And May, 47, proves she is no pushover. She insists her old fiefdom, to be flogged off by Howard, is not the enemy within as Tory leaders believe. She also warns Howard not to scrap her policy of selecting more women, blacks and (ooh, shock) gays as candidates (the new leader lets it be known such liberalism is a distraction from hammering Labour).

Besides, if she is useless, why has she been replaced as chairman by Lord Saatchi and Liam Fox? “Yes, it takes two men to step into the shoes of one woman,” she smiles. “It was difficult to leave, I really enjoyed being chairman.” She loyally insists the peer and doctor will divide their duties without killing each other, but does not hide her rage at being blamed for Tory malaise.

“It is grossly unfair. Central Office constantly gets attacked when things go wrong and is perceived as the bad guy, whatever happens. It has really good staff who must feel very sad reading things in the papers based on whispered conversations.” Often, of course, whispered by cronies of IDS and now Howard.

How did she face that clandestine war? “I don’t operate that way and I assume others don’t either. As far as I’m concerned, Central Office was not a Trojan horse (to oust IDS).” That apparent naivety makes her more palatable, but if she had perfected the dark arts, might she have impressed the regime of Michael “Nightshade” Howard more?

“I don’t think it’s about endearing me to what you call ‘the Howard regime’. Any leader wants their own person as chairman. I got on with what I believed to be the job rather than the black arts. It was disruptive the way people kept opening papers and seeing anonymous sources making claims, and nobody knew who they were.”

She constantly returns to this, suggesting she is still deeply bruised. Her apparent falling out with IDS is “mythology, I suspect from briefings from people who had it in their interest to do this”. Central Office under IDS scarcely seems safer than the politburo under Stalin. “It wasn’t the case that he retreated from making the party more diverse.” Yeah, right.

“He left me to get more diverse candidates and I am proud of that. We have had a far greater proportion of women selected. Under my chairmanship two women have been selected in Conservative-held seats.”

Two? And you are proud of that?