Sky Views: Theresa May is not so different from David Cameron after all

Beth Rigby, Senior Political Correspondent

David Cameron, the "chumocracy" prime minister with a "woman problem"; colleagues complained that he surrounded himself with old pals and ran a "sofa government" in which key decisions were taken informally by an inner (male) cabal.

Mrs May swept into No 10 promising to do away with all that. She wanted the return of a more collaborative system of cabinet government and to put more women into senior roles.

And yet she finds herself, a week out from the election, losing support amongst female voters and badly damaged by an unforced error over social care.

Colleagues are furious not only about the u-turn, but the fact that it was dropped into the manifesto in utter secrecy by co-chief of staff Nick Timothy. The chums may have changed, the chumocracy has not.

And what of her predecessor's problem with women? Polling suggests she might have one too.

Much of Jeremy Corbyn's uptick in the polls can be put down to female voters falling in behind the Labour leader.

Just 31% of women planned to vote Labour in mid-May but that figure jumped to 40% the weekend after the manifesto launches - putting Labour just a single point behind the Tories with female voters, according to an ORB poll for the Sunday Telegraph.

"The major change in four weeks has been the shift in support among women," said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB International. "Slowly by slowly more women appeared to be inclined to vote Labour. On the issues, women have more confidence in Jeremy Corbyn than men."

So I asked Mrs May this week: is she a female prime minister with a woman problem? She laughed awkwardly before launching a staunch defence of her social care policy and glossing over her (relatively) poor polling with women.

The social care pitch may have been designed to prove to ordinary working people that Mrs May was prepared to take on middle England in the pursuit of a fairer Britain; it has rather spectacularly backfired.

The Prime Minister managed to remind the nation - and particularly female voters - of the mess our social care system is in, and offered little reassurance over how she'll sort it out.

It's a far cry from 2015, when Labour launched the pink battle bus in an effort to play to the narrative of an Etonian-educated prime minister who neither understood nor cared about women voters.

There are, in the words of Theresa May, "girl jobs and boy jobs". She's a girl in a boy job. Make it count.

Then deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman argued that women had issues in their lives that needed to be addressed by public policy - childcare costs, unequal pay, social care, domestic violence and political representation.

It may have been a rather kitsch gimmick, but it played into a more serious point.

In the past few general elections, women have been more inclined to vote Labour, and in 2015, 33% of women supported Ed Miliband, compared with 30% of men.

When it came to David Cameron, he won slightly more support from male voters - with 38% of men voting for him, against 37% of women.

Even as the polls tighten, analysts expect Theresa May to return to No 10 on 9 June. But she must learn the lessons of what is fast becoming a very difficult campaign.

Her Conservative candidates are bruised by the social care u-turn and irritated that a committee of three running the Government - May and her co-chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy - got them into that mess.

Party management after this election needs to change; less command and control, more consultation.

But Mrs May should also use her mandate to become a transformative female prime minister rather than a titular one.

She has it in her grasp to turn the Tories into the party of women, not just workers, by championing her domestic violence agenda, and pushing harder on equal pay and equality.

There are, in the words of Theresa May, "girl jobs and boy jobs".

She's a girl in a boy job. Make it count.

Sky Views is a new series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every weekday morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Tom Cheshire: Why manifesto for digital state should worry you