Seeing Britain has yet to elect a female Prime Minister (or even a female Leader of the Opposition), I was kind of curious about when this could be achieved and achieved the earliest. No, this is not another of the cliched and utterly implausible Nancy Astor-becomes-Tory leader-and-leads-Britain-through-WWII, but I was inspired by those. Could the first woman to be a British Prime Minister actually be a Tory, or is it like many commentators believe a paradigm shift that has to come through Labour? Granted, Shirley Williams was close to getting the leadership back in 1992, but there hasn't actually been a single credible woman candidate for that post within the party since.
So, to pursue this course, I was looking through what leading women there were in the Tory Party back 40-50 years ago, and I think I've found a proper candidate:
Margaret Thatcher:
MP for Finchley 1959-1981, Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Macmillan's government and Secretary of State for Education and Science in Heath's government. She was apparently a close political ally to Keith Joseph who challenged Heath for the Tory leadership back in 1975.
So my idea is this: In 1975, for one reason or another, Keith Joseph decides not to run for the leadership, but encourages Thatcher to do so. Will she come any closer than Joseph to winning it? And if she wins it, could she become Prime Minister?
Discuss.