From Mary Honeyball MEP.

Sir, Caroline Jackson is a master of understatement when she says that the Tories in Brussels “have yet to lose their ‘nasty’ tag” (Comment, February 18). She is right that offending members of your own group is no way to win friends and influence people.

The candidates that a party selects to represent them say a lot about the party itself. It’s worrying then that Ms Jackson is the only woman in a group of 28 Tory MEPs. Syria and Iran have better representation of women in their parliaments than the Tories do in Brussels.

The Tories will shed their “nasty” tag only when they get some degree of gender balance in their elected representatives. Indeed, more women like Ms Jackson would help to make the Tories a little bit nicer and a lot more influential.

Mary Honeyball,
Labour, London,
European Parliament