CAN the Conservative Party afford to lose one of their few experienced women MPs because (we are told) she was “difficult to work with”? A long-standing MP and a chair of a Select Committee does not sound as if she was”difficult”.

We don’t know of course because the process has gone on behind closed doors. Nor do we know about the subsequent selection open to few members. Half the electorate are women, and many dislike this ousting of an MP. I am not a Conservative voter, but to me if it looks like misogyny, smells like misogyny then it probably is misogyny.

Jill Knight, Hovingham