The exciting launch of the Millicent Garrett Fawcett statue yesterday with the etched images of 59 other women around the base of the plinth was marred in my view by the attempts by at least one political party to try to claim this for themselves. Politicians albeit male ones alone in the day were not the solution to the work of Millicent Fawcett, they were the problem. That said she worked hard to persuade her husband Henry who was the Liberal MP for Brighton to promote the issue of womans suffrage before his death which he did faithfully. These tweets are a small selection of the ones I spotted on twitter, posted by Tory MPs and Party members. Each of them attempted to use the launch of the statue or the statue itself to promote the Tory Party or its MPs in isolation of the other people at the event with the exception of the reference to Jess Philips in the top left hand tweet. I have no idea if Millicent was entirely committed to the party her husband was MP for, if so these Tories could not be more wrong if they think she would have aligned herself with their party. Indeed universal suffrage was obstructed at every step of the way by the people who controlled this nation who are predominately the Tory Party. That does not mean there are no members of the party who are not committed to full engagement by society, but trying to make this a uniquely Tory Party item is deeply deeply flawed. The very fact that these Tories were sitting together rather than engaging with the rest of the community they are part of seems wrong to me. Many of them are certainly women of courage, but their courage must extend beyond sitting with your mates and separate from those you disagree with. It is true that we have only had two UK Prime Ministers who are women and these are both Tories. It is certainly true that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems have never had a women leader, although Shirley Williams was part of the gang of 4 when the SDP was launched. However the Green Party, SNP, Plaid Cymru, DUP, Sinn Fein and even UKIP have all had or have women leaders. This is not something that distinguishes the Tories in any sense, although of course we are probably some time away from a Government run by the Greens here in the UK!