Yet again women are swinging against Labour. If women never had the vote, we'd never have had Conservative governments. Thank women's votes for Thatcher, Europhobia, the poll tax and the tripling of poverty. Think Molly in Animal Farm - airhead, fickle, silly moos. A month before the last election the Fawcett Society and Mori reported that a quarter of women voters were still undecided.
Women switch-voters threaten to switch back.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher there's been a feminist problem with women and politics. But there are good demographic reasons to explain women's tendency to vote Tory. But psephologists don't know whether women turn Tory as they get old or whether the current old women are a dying Tory generation. British Social Attitudes shows how higher education creates far more liberal attitudes and older women are the least educated. There's an old tradition of working-class women adopting conservative views along with higher social aspirations preferring to vote with the antimacassar not the cloth cap.