Karen Bradley and Nicky Morgan: Two whips who will help define Cameron's next reshuffle

By Andrew Gimson 
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Reshuffle speculation is almost always wrong. But one can already see with some clarity two of the tests by which David Cameron’s next rearrangement of his team will be judged. Oceans of ink will be devoted to the essentially tiresome question of how many women he has promoted, while more subtle observers will wish to see whether the Whips’ Office has regained its traditional role as a training ground for ministerial office.

It happens that two junior whips, Nicky Morgan and Karen Bradley, are among the women tipped for promotion. So watching what, if anything, happens to them, will be one way of gauging the character of the reshuffle.But before the two women, a word about the two tests. In April 2009, Mr Cameron allowed himself to say, with the expansiveness that comes so easily to a Leader of the Opposition: “If elected, by the end of our first Parliament I want a third of all my ministers to be female.” The time has surely come to announce that he has ditched this aspiration, and not just because of his unselfconsciously arrogant use of the word “my” to refer to what are actually the Queen’s ministers.

As long as lazy commentators are able to say, for want of anything more perceptive, “Mr Cameron is still a long way short of his target of getting women into 33 per cent of ministerial posts,” the astonishing change which has occurred since he became party leader will be ignored or undervalued.
At the 2005 general election, 17 women were elected as Conservative MPs. At the 2010 general election, this number almost tripled to 49. The increase occurred from a low base, but the rate of travel is remarkable.

Many of these new Tory women are plainly of high ability, and ought on merit to be offered ministerial office. But it would be ludicrous to distort the whole appointment process, and foment accusations of tokenism, by trying to achieve the 33 per cent target by 2015. Paul Goodman has expounded the discouraging mathematical calculations which go through the minds of male Tory backbenchers as they ponder their chances of promotion. It would be unfair and impracticable to run the party on the basis that only women can hope to become ministers.

Nor is accelerated promotion always a good idea for those who appear to benefit from it. There is much to be said for learning how Parliament and the legislative process work before one is thrust into the glare of high office. Which is why it was a good idea to put Nicky Morgan and Karen Bradley in the Whips’ Office. As a former whip pointed out, “Traditionally the Whips’ Office was seen as a training ground for people, and a very valuable one, where you get to know the parliamentary party backwards, and how the business works.” This former whip thought it had been a great mistake to sack four whips (Shailesh Vara, Bill Wiggin, James Duddridge and Brooks Newmark) in last September’s reshuffle: “It diminishes what people think of the Whips’ Office.”

Andrew Mitchell, who was made Chief Whip in that reshuffle (a post from which he was soon forced to resign after scandalously inaccurate allegations were made against him by the police), said: “This is the Whips’ Office I put together. When I was first a whip, in the 1990s, we didn’t have any women in the office at all, and one of the revelations to me as Chief Whip was how immensely the whipping operation was strengthened by the women we had in the office. In the past we had massively underestimated the potential and the role of women whips.”

Mr Mitchell was warm in his praise of both Mrs Morgan and Mrs Bradley: “The two ladies you mention are extremely able, very good whips, and both of them have glittering parliamentary careers ahead of them.”

Mrs Morgan, MP for Loughborough since 2010, was educated at Surbiton High School and St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she read law before qualifying as a solicitor. She fought Islington South and Finsbury in 2001, and Loughborough for the first time in 2005, when she cut Labour’s majority and prepared the way for victory in 2010. She is married with one son.

Mrs Bradley, MP for Staffordshire Moorlands since 2010, was educated at Buxton Girls’ School, a comprehensive, and Imperial College, London, where she read mathematics before qualifying as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser. She “well and truly caught the politics bug” when she was seconded from KPMG to advise the Conservatives’ shadow Treasury team. In 2005 she fought Manchester Withington, in 2006 she was adopted from the A list as Tory candidate in Staffordshire Moorlands, and in 2010 she took that seat off Labour. She is married with two children.

Both women have worked very hard to win difficult seats and are described as “extremely capable”. One backbencher said: “I think they’re both incredibly good and talented.” Another said: “I think Nicky Morgan is fantastic: very steady, incredibly nice, well-mannered, respectful of her colleagues, funny, principled. Even as a whip she voted against gay marriage. Karen Bradley is a flibbertigibbet and a gossip. She’s got no empathy, she’s out for herself. I’m finding it staggering that her name is being mentioned for promotion.” A third Conservative MP said: “Once in the Whips’ Office, Karen became very bossy and arrogant, and started falling out with all her colleagues. If she was promoted it would go down very badly with backbenchers.”

In defence of Mrs Bradley, it should be said that it is not always the job of a whip to be popular.
No one has a bad word to say about Mrs Morgan, who is the more widely known of the two, having joined the Conservative Party at the age of 17. One member of the 2010 intake said of her: “I’ve known Nicky since Oxford days and she’s really competent, able and nice. I think she would be a really sensible, excellent promotion. If Cameron promotes women who are really able it looks much less tokenistic and I think there’s a chance they’d really shine. Nicky’s not a thrusting, ambitious hack. She has a kindliness about her.”

Some idea of the two women’s contrasting outlooks and styles can be gained from the way they justified their votes on the gay marriage issue to their local papers. Mrs Bradley told The Sentinel in Staffordshire:

This issue has filled my postbag for months and months. I have thought long and hard about it because it's not a decision I take easily. I really don't want people to feel that the world is going to end because of this, and I do believe a lot of the concerns that people have are unfounded.
Allowing same sex marriage will not affect most people, but it will make a huge difference to the people it does affect. Those people in same sex relationships who want to make this very special commitment to the ones they love will now be able to do that…

My husband is a Catholic who agrees with the decision I am taking, and he has personally discussed this matter with priests and others. A lot of people talk about marriage being ordained by God and I don't question that – I was married in a church myself. But 75 per cent of marriages are civil services where there is no mention of God…

I think of those parents who have gay children who would be deprived of the opportunity of being mother of the bride or groom who will now get that opportunity, and I think it's fantastic.

Mrs Morgan told the Loughborough edition of the  Leicester Mercury:

This was totally a free vote, it was an issue of conscience and I had no pressure put on me from anyone higher in the Conservative party. As an issue, this generated more response from my constituency than I have had before, the Loughborough office received more calls, visits and letters on this subject than we have ever seen before.

On the day of the vote, I had 285 people who had written to me asking me to vote against it and just 24 asking me to vote for it. At that point, it was clear to me that people in my constituency wanted me to vote against it. There were also three main reasons of my own that I voted against it.
First, this is a very big social change. There have been plenty of little changes down the years but what’s never been changed is that the fact that marriage is between a man and a woman.
think that was one of the issues people, especially those who asked me to vote against, found hardest to accept and it also tied in with my own Christian faith too…

The Tory Party is far more diverse than some people realise. Perhaps the fairest treatment of these two women would be to promote both of them, or else leave both of them for another year in the Whips’ Office.

Comments

[teigitur]

I am liking Mrs Morgan!

[Elaine Turner]

I think this piece very gossipy. I would be more interested to know what the two women did once they left university and what success they had achieved in work and what experience that gives them to be Ministers. I also think it might not be a kindness to give Minister's jobs to two people who won their seats from opposing parties last time, unless they did so with huge majorities, because I think it is up to them to concentrate on getting re-elected next time. If they are Ministers they can't nurse their constituencies to the same degree. There are other women who would be worth promoting and Andrea Leadsom has to be one of them.

[David MacDonald]

Does anyone in the Tory Party still care about anything other than homosexuality?

[adrian clarke]

The very idea of the post creates false equality and is at the heart of political correctness. Why should the cabinet consist of 33% women, why any , why not all. Surely being a member of any ruling group be it a cabinet or boardroom should depend entirely upon ability.

[Philip]

Mrs Morgan is excellent.

[zetta]

Andrea Leadsom is indeed excellent - but she is hardly a Cameroon; he's too gutless and unimaginative to promote her.

[Elaine Turner]

Out of curiosity, why isn't the response for comments in the same format as the normal threads? I prefer it when we can respond to other poster's comments.

[smithersjones1]

Here we go again. Can I make a suggestion. Instead of boring the hell out of us with these perpetual articles promoting this woman MP or that (presumably because someone has a crush on them) why not at every reshuffle just list all the Tory female MP's discount the current Cabinet Ministers and those who have been previously been sacked or demoted plus MadNads (for obvious reasons), Sarah Wollaston (who is not one of them ~ open primary maverick dontcha know) and any other woman who has pissed Dave off and say that they are all tipped for promotion. In that way we only have to suffer one article of this "fanny fetish" and not the dozens of them most of which have little or no substance to them!

Baldwin, Harriett
Blackwood, Nicola
Bradley, Karen
Bray, Angie
Bruce, Fiona
Coffey, Therese
Crouch, Tracey
Dinenage, Caroline
Dorries, Nadine
Doyle-Price, Jackie
Ellison, Jane
Fullbrook, Lorraine
Gillan, Cheryl
Grant, Helen
Greening, Justine
Harris, Rebecca
James, Margot
Laing, Eleanor
Latham, Pauline
Leadsom, Andrea
Lee, Jessica
Leslie, Charlotte
Lumley, Karen
Macleod, Mary
Main, Anne
May, Theresa
McIntosh, Anne
McVey, Esther
Mensch, Louise
Miller, Maria
Milton, Anne
Mordaunt, Penny
Morgan, Nicky
Morris, Anne-Marie
Murray, Sheryll
Newton, Sarah
Nokes, Caroline
Patel, Priti
Perry, Claire
Rudd, Amber
Sandys, Laura
Smith, Chloe
Soubry, Anna
Spelman, Caroline
Truss, Elizabeth
Villiers, Theresa
Watkinson, Angela
Wheeler, Heather
Wollaston, Sarah

See its easy........

[onwards]

Tory women aren't where the power is: The Quad and Europe. Being in the cabinet is a bit like being a lower class man on the sinking Titanic. May is the only woman with any clout in this government. I rate Greening, but she's wasted in a department where money is being thrown at her. She's better when implanting cuts. Warsi wasn't popular in her previous role, but I think she'd make a good job at being Communities Sec or something. Truss should one day replace Gove.

[OxtedTory]

I find Elaine’s comment very interesting about wanting to know what candidates have done following university. Its interesting given this is often raised as an issue when considerations of who should or shouldn’t be a Minister are being articulated. The usual thought process suggests we need more people with “real world” experience (never really defined). It’s actually a big problem for our party. We are populated with city bods, lawyers and bean counters. No different in my eyes to career politicians and bag carriers. The performance in government of such supposed private sector successes demonstrates that. We need to reach out and find the technical experts in their field...Perhaps this explains why Dr Wollaston is “maverick” in the eyes of the village...

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