In the five Wandsworth wards the Conservatives are almost certain to win in the election today, the party has fielded just one woman. The other 12 are men.
It is not an accident or an unexpected confluence of factors. In what insiders have described as a particularly unpleasant selection process, capable and experienced women candidates, many of them sitting councillors, were pushed out of their seats to make way for preferred candidates, all of whom happen to be men.
Several of those women decided to walk away; others fought to stay within the system and are now standing in unfamiliar wards that they are statistically far less likely to win.
The deep blue wards of Lavender, Northcote, and Thamesfield have all-male Conservative slates. The single woman standing in a seat the party could expect to win is Angela Graham, who first became a Conservative councillor in 1986, stood down in 2014, and returned via a by-election in 2015. She will continue to sit alongside Peter Graham in Wandsworth Common.
In number terms, across 22 wards, the Conservatives have selected 16 women among their 58 candidates — 28%, up from 20% in 2022. But the increase is concentrated in wards the party has little prospect of winning. In the five safest seats, female representation has fallen from 25% to 8%.
The pattern did not emerge by accident. It reflects a deliberate strategy that Conservative sources say were driven by internal power politics ahead of a leadership challenge that is expected soon after the results come in.
The women who won in 2022 and are gone in 2026
In 2022, seven Conservative women won seats in Wandsworth. Four of them are not standing in 2026 at all. A fifth has been moved to a ward she may not win.
Rosemary Birchall won Wandsworth Common with 2,560 votes — 13% more than the next candidate. She is not standing. Kim Caddy topped the Conservative slate in Southfields with 1,853 votes. She is not standing. Steffi Sutters won West Putney with 2,534 votes, one of the highest individual Conservative tallies across the borough that year. She is not standing.
The fourth departure is the most telling. Emmeline Owens topped the Conservative slate in Northcote in 2022 with 2,244 votes. She held the ward comfortably — the Conservative margin over Labour was nearly 800 votes. Widely regarded as a thoughtful and effective councillor, she was not selected for her own seat this election and has moved to Southfields, where the Conservatives held their second seat by just 61 votes in 2022.
Her Northcote seat has instead gone to James Craig, a press officer for Victoria Atkins MP and before that for Conservative headquarters. The local party’s current leader, Aled Richards-Jones, is the ward’s other shoo-in candidate.
The replacements
In Thamesfield — where the Conservatives hold a significant majority — two sitting councillors have stood down. Their replacements are both men: Robert Morritt, chairman of the Putney Conservative Association, who previously represented East Putney (2010–2014) before leaving the party in disgrace, and Salvatore Murtas, who stood in West Hill in 2022 and lost.
This is not a settled party. We reported in August last year that Richards-Jones had orchestrated the deselection of Mark Justin — then a sitting councillor for Nine Elms — to secure the loyalty of former leader Will Sweet, whose own position had come under threat. Justin subsequently defected to Reform UK; his place on the Conservative roster taken by another man, Matt Corner, who can be expected to vote for Richards-Jones in a leadership challenge.
Five Conservative sources have told Putney.news that a leadership challenge against Richards-Jones is expected after Thursday’s results, regardless of how the party performs. The irony is likely to be that the more successful the Conservatives are in this election, the less likely their leader is to survive it.
For comparison
Across the same five wards, Labour has fielded six women among thirteen candidates. The Liberal Democrats have four women among thirteen. The Greens have six women among twelve.
Correction, 8.15am: This article originally stated that Angela Graham became a Conservative councillor in 2010 and that this would be her third term. In fact, she was first elected in 1986, stood down in 2014, and was returned in a by-election in 2015.
We also stated that neither Robert Morritt nor Salvatore Murtas had previously won a seat in Wandsworth. In fact, Morritt represented East Putney as a Conservative councillor from 2010 to 2014. The article has been updated accordingly.
