by Rene Kinzett
Councillor, PPC for Swansea West and TRG Member
At this evening’s Swansea Council Meeting, we briefly debated the recommendations of the Welsh Assembly Government Panel looking into how councillors are selected and elected across Wales and how we should all be working towards making councillors more representative of the communities they represent. For example, across Wales, 75% of councillors are men.
I have made my views known and given more analysis on the WalesHome website.
This debate reminded me about the issues surrounding the debate within and outside the Conservative Party on All-Women Shorlists. Currently, only 28% of all selected Tory Parliamentary Candidates are women. Whilst the number of female Tory MPs looks set, at current estimates, to rise from 18 to around 60, the trends for women being selected in currently held Conservative constituencies (where the sitting MP is retiring) is not very satisfactory at all.
Of the last 8 selections for candidates in these seats, all 8 have selected male candidates, even after rules were implemented ensuring balanced shorlists in three of those selection battles. Interestingly, the only Tory-held seat to select a female candidate recently has been Totnes, which selected a local GP after an open primary selection procedure.
Now, the John Maples MP, the Deputy Chairman of the Party with responsibility for candidates, has posted his views as to why All-Women Shortlists, in Tory-held seats, is now vital if the Party is to seriously address the historic (and continuing) under-representation of women in our Parliamentary Party.
I have to say that I do agree that we MUST press ahead with All-Women Shortlists. It cannot be the case that we are selecting only the best candidates when under one-third of our PPCs are women. It simply cannot be the case that selection committees are weighing up in a fair and even manner the respective skills of all candidates of both genders and coming up with conclusions that appear to virtually exclusively favour male candidates. There are problems with selection procedures and approval systems for candidates in ALL parties, but we have to act NOW and not wait another four years or more before we can move decisively towards a more balanced and representative Parliamentary Party.
I would propose that open primary selection procedures should now be brought in for ALL selections for Parliamentary candidates across ALL political parties – conceivably this could be enshrined in law. This seems to have been the one initative within the Party that has had some success in selecting women in winnable seats.
Conservative HQ have challenged local parties to take the issue of selecting women candidates more seriously and they have failed. The Party may express that it is “reluctantly” going down the road of All-Women Shortlists, but to quote one famous Tory lady “there is no alternative”.
This piece first appeared on Rene’s Blog. You can see the original here




The death of Senator Edward Kennedy was a moment when even his most hostile critics sat up and acknowledged the passing of a formidable political figure. Teddy Kennedy was the last in the line of the Kennedy brothers and sons of Joe Kennedy. What ifs are a great game to play in politics and as the TRG Board is composed largely of History graduates, it is a game we are often prone to. 

In a new article for the TRG Blog, the Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Rifkind QC MP, the former Foreign and Defence Secretary and TRG Patron, reflects on the Iraq War. In this timely piece, written as Britain’s combat operations in Iraq draw to a close, Sir Malcolm calls the Iraq War “the most serious mistake of American and British foreign policy in the last fifty years”. 



