The Tory right wants to drag women back to the dark ages

The right wing of the Conservative Party turns with glowing eyes to Gilead. All extremist political movements depend on invented enemies to inspire fear and the promise of renewal and, at the National Conservative Conference in London this week, they invoked a familiar victim for sacrifice: the non-compliant female and her too-small brood.

- TANYA GOLD

We now have a good idea of where women will sit should these people consume the Conservative Party, and it won't be comfortable. Danny Kruger, the previously anodyne MP for Devizes, praised, "The normative family held together by marriage. By mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, and the sake of their own parents, and the sake of themselves: this is the only possible basis for a safe and successful society".

I won't try to guess what element of Kruger's childhood made him long for a fantasy so consuming he wishes to extend it to others, by social sanction if necessary - and who knows what comes after? (American conservatives are interested in this conference, and they have gaily made laws that butcher women. The repeal of Roe v Wade is only one example.)