Who would you rather, David Cameron or Nick Clegg? “Both together, at the same time. Assuming that I could manage, because I’m old enough to be their mum.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that a discussion of the new coalition politics takes an unexpected turn with Edwina Currie. She is, after all, as famous for her outlandish and often ill-advised comments as she ever was for her politics; the defining moments of her career her affair with John Major (her revelation) and an infamous blunder about the level of Salmonella in British eggs (her political downfall).
Today, despite having been out of parliament since 1997, the fabulously bitchy streak that made her into a figure of media attention, and frequent fun, remains. I first meet her before she delivers a talk at the Oxford Union as part of the Society’s Women’s Initiative. In spite of the female focus of the event, as she enters the room she tells me she has no time for The Feminists, as she dismissively refers to them. “The Feminists are such miseries. You can quote me on that”. In the talk, and afterwards in the bar, she explains the point. The Feminists, she claims, constantly cast women as victims.
Currie says she did it for herself, making it in to parliament at a time when there only twenty-three other female MPs, without the need for all women shortlists (predictably, she’s not a fan), or New Labour equality measures. “Rather than get sidetracked with discussions about equality and how wrong everything was, I thought: they managed to do it, I’m going to do it the same way,” she says, and there’s the sense she has been crystallised at her ruthless, 80s Tory peak; from her individualistic attitudes down to her shoulder-padded pleather jacket. “A lot of women today say, ‘oh how hard it is to be a mother of a small child’, and how all the odds are stacked against them. Well, it wasn’t that difficult.”
In the bar after the talk, I tell her about the event at the University Conservative Association this week, when one female student was shouted down mid-speech with the chant of “kitchen, kitchen!” from a guest. How would she have reacted, as a vehement non-feminist? She leans towards me across the sofa, touches me firmly on the knee and says: “Yeah, I’ll see you in the kitchen. Later tonight. Under the table, waiting for you.” Gulp. “It would put him back in his place. That’s something Hilary Clinton could never do. Don’t be a victim. Have a sense of humour.” We talk about gender in the Union and in OUCA – she was Union Librarian in the 60s, and a picture of her committee still hangs in the corridor outside – and she tells me how she never found there was sexism in the Society back then. So what went wrong; how can Oxford have taken such a step back? It’s The Feminists’ fault, of course. “I think The Feminists have created an environment where a lot of young women see themselves as victims, where they want to be protected.”
But her anti-feminist stance doesn’t mean she’s not progressive. Not a bit of it, she says: “Whoever you are: whatever your gender, whatever your sexuality, whatever your ethnic background, whatever your colour, whatever your accent, you have something to contribute. And you should not expect special treatment, but you should figure out how to get to the same place that everybody else is at.” In her speech, she draws attention to her involvement in reducing the age of consent for male gay sex from twenty-one to eighteen, and claims she got a job at the BBC so soon after leaving parliament because “I had a lot of friends in the gay world”.
Judy Garland she ain’t, but an hour of catty comments later, it’s clear that it’s not just her campaigning for homosexual equality that has made her a friend of the gays. Iain Duncan Smith is “not worth mentioning” when we talk about former Tory leaders; Blair is “gone and best forgotten”; Julie Bindel, writer for “the bloody Guardian” is one of the “women writers who have never done anything in their lives apart from telling people their opinion”, while David Laws is “probably a bit screwed up”. Even her opinion of John Major, for whom she expressed undying love in her published diaries, is unforgiving. I tell her that I met and interviewed Major a couple of weeks ago on his own visit to the Union. “Oh yes,” she says, picturing him in Oxford, “he was always a bit scared of the great academe. I think he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder… He didn’t have the self confidence to surround himself with the very best, and that I think affected the quality of his regime.” When I say that he came across as a very different sort of politician from the ones dropped out of the Oxford mould, Currie is not convinced. “No, he would have loved to have been here. Whether he would have got in or not, that’s harder to tell.”
Though her public profile is maintained now through appearances as a commentator and on reality TV like Wife Swap and Hell’s Kitchen (“You have to earn a living”), she was still out on the campaign trail for last month’s general election, canvassing in person – I can’t quite work out how I’d feel if I opened my front door to find Currie waiting for me – and helping out other female parliamentary candidates. The Jewish mother side of her comes across in the stories she tells of her time on the campaign, rolling her eyes in recollection of some of the “posh” women candidates she was paired with. One she harangued for wearing a Labour-red scarf. Another she ticked off for using her Blackberry while out. “I said, ‘what are you doing?’ She said ‘I’m keeping up with my twitter’. I said, ‘The people on there can’t vote for you'”, and I get the feeling that she would have quite liked to have confiscated the phone altogether. When I tell her how terrified I would have been going out canvassing with her, she cackles gleefully. The persona clearly means a lot.
She’s got to get up to Huddersfield for a talk at a ladies’ lunch group, so the interview comes to an end, without so much as a mention of her egg-related blunder. Decades on, why should there be? But just as she’s about leave, a spectacled American tour guide wanders over to the table. “I used to love your radio show,” he says, and the two strike up a brief conversation about American politics. Then comes the rub: “Whenever I bring a group to the Union, I always show them your picture.” She smiles. “I always point you out and say, ‘That’s her. That’s the egg lady!'”
The smile tightens, and though she must have heard a thousand variations on Salmonella jokes, the steely determination that took her so close the top shows itself – and there is the barely perceptible impression that Currie wouldn’t mind scratching his eyes out.
