• Attitude 'may discourage female candidates'
• Local party attacked over Truss deselection battle
Grass roots Conservative party members are guilty of "misogyny and jealousy" which risks driving women away from standing as parliamentary candidates, it is claimed.
Dorothy Luckhurst, who is on the Tory A-list, writes in the Guardian that the row over whether fellow candidate Liz Truss should have told her local officials that she had had an affair made the party look beyond the "frontiers of tolerance".
Party modernisers are in a battle with the Norfolk constituency threatening to deselect Truss on account of her failing to disclose an affair five years ago with Tory MP Mark Field. The local party's officials only learned of her affairs three days after picking her for the safe Conservative seat last weekend and insist Truss was being dishonest.
It also emerged over the weekend that a senior Tory official had rejected requests to ask Truss about her past before she won the selection, further irritating the grassroots at the perceived interference from Conservative central headquarters.
Truss, director of the London-based thinktank Reform and a working mother-of-two, is the type of woman Tory leader David Cameron wants to encourage into his party; this is the latest battle of wills between the so-called Notting Hill set and a local association. Before news of the difference in opinion over Truss's suitability broke, Cameron had already committed himself to imposing the controversial all-women shortlists on some constituencies after Christmas.
However, this case threatens to tread on constituency turf and damage Cameron's attempt to "detoxify" his party's image. The South West Norfolk party is reported to have received messages of support from neighbouring constituencies, also fed up by the party's high command "parachuting in of the beautiful people".
However, Luckhurst said the idea that the local party was defending itself and its decisions against an overmighty centre was "deplorable sanctimony". Instead she paints a picture of widespread misogyny and suggests the purpose of the backlash against Truss is to discourage other women.
Luckhurst, who used to sit on the Scottish Conservatives candidates board, describes herself being deselected when she became pregnant without consulting her constituency party. She said local associations would frequently ask women "whether they have children, how they intend to look after them if they are elected and whether their husband will accompany them to the adoption meeting".
Of the South West Norfolk party, Luckhurst writes: "Their conduct makes [the Tories'] case unappealing to ambitious women, it weakens our potential to appeal beyond our traditional electoral base and diminishes our capacity to govern in the national interest."
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