Jeremy Paxman's appearance is a masterclass on what ennui can do to the human face. This week he turned it on Chloe Smith, a junior Treasury minister, who arrived on Newsnight to defend the deferred 3p rise in fuel duty because George Osborne was eating something, somewhere, and couldn't make it.
Smith, who looks like a Goth pixie, was savaged by Paxman, and was then, in the way of things, savaged again for being savaged. Poor Chloe Smith, went this narrative. How could she be expected to defend herself against broadcasting's giant squid? She is only a girl. She is young. (She is 30, which is, actually, the average life expectancy of a dolphin.) He would not do it to a man; except he does, and every day. Paxman does not do sexual profiling because he is omnivorous. He will digest anything as long as it tastes political. He may even be a feminist.
The aftermath was grisly. It was unfair, said Tories, in "supportive" briefings that blew the remains of Smith's head off, to put someone so "relatively inexperienced" up against Paxman, when she could have been painting the Tory tree on a cupcake. That Smith wobbled not because she is a girl, but because she forgot that Paxman only needs to be shouted at to pout and desist, was ignored.
One "supportive" colleague compared Smith to a "tiny mouse"; another said that whoever put her in front of a TV camera again after she blathered during Channel 4 News "should be taken out and shot"; yet another pointed out that Smith's boss, Osborne, was at a dinner party during the broadcast, and this was an act of terrible moral cowardice.
It was all very Tolstoyan, but watching the Tories eat their females, apparently in revenge for some positive discrimination, is becoming a sport. There have been similar briefings against Lady Warsi, sometimes so loud that the mere memory of her is a panic attack in shoes. But who can be surprised? This is government by clique, and the function of a clique is to isolate everyone beyond it. Sometimes it is a nation, and sometimes it is only a woman.
I am supposed, at this point, to ride to Smith's rescue and say what a disgrace, blah. How dare her anonymous colleague describe her as a "mouse" while Paxman gets to be a cat, which is bigger and more powerful than a mouse? Except that such a stand, although tempting, is a distraction, a (mouse) trap and a waste of time. Defend Chloe Smith from her sniggering colleagues? Why? Why stand in solidarity with a woman who stands in solidarity only with herself? This week the prime minister announced that he is considering making single mothers seek work when their youngest child is three. Three! Feminism, in its idealism and elitism, may defend Smith from her colleagues, but who will defend feminism from Smith? You cannot seek equality in the subclauses of anonymous briefings, and not in other, more ill-paid, unfulfilling and uncomfortable workplaces. Smith may have been unable to slap Paxman for his interruptions, but she is able to vote for all sorts of legislation that harms women, and she does.
The myth persists that a woman in parliament, by virtue of her genitalia and her shoe size, is a feminist. This fantasy, which defines a woman by her gender, just as a misogynist does, should have died in the arms of Margaret Thatcher, who said, "I owe nothing to women's lib", and so gave nothing in return. A few years ago, Theresa May posed in a T-shirt that read, "This is what a feminist looks like", which is admirable, except it isn't what a feminist looks like.
Confusing feminism with femininity is as daft as confusing feminism with consumption; either you are committed to equality for all women, in which case you are a feminist, or you are committed to equality for some women, in which case you are a friend, or you are committed to equality for yourself, in which case you are a probably a Conservative.
Even so, a new generation of female Tories, the most laughable of whom is Louise Mensch, who has boasted, with zero irony, of sitting, "behind a frontbench that we know to be relentlessly focused on social justice and women's issues", have claimed the term feminism for themselves. These women insist that they are feminists because they promote the female cause, except – and this is their error – they presume the cause exists entirely within the reflection they see in the mirror. This is not feminism but narcissism and, if you take politics as a measure, women are no more in it together than Paxman and Smith squabbling on a screen.
Tory women talk about genital mutilation, Page 3 and birth control but, at the very centre of their vision they have class blindness, and this is why feminism will elude them. For the vast majority of British women, these are non-issues floating in the celestial clouds above the reality of low pay, unemployment, social immobility and the most expensive childcare in Europe.
Obviously, female politicians face trial by shoe and rhyming insults from angry subeditors and their own male colleagues and this, of course, is irritating. But to use these taunts to mask the opinions of female politicians advances the lie that, for a feminist agenda, having any woman in parliament is better than none.
Twitter: @tanyagold1