Just as I was beginning to despair about women and politics - our numbers, our power, our image - a new Joan of Arc steps forth. Ann Widdecombe wants to be prime minister.
Sharp eyes have already noticed that she is moulding herself for power. Hair seems to be top of the voters' agenda when it comes to personal following for a leader, so Ms Widdecombe has gradually been phasing out her Darth Vader helmet in favour of a gentler, soft brown look. She no longer cuts it with Boris Johnson's pocket knife, either. This is a sleek Ann, a groomed Ann.
Like John Prescott, Ann Widdecombe enjoys enormous support among the party faithful. The two are the Viola and Sebastian of politics - Twelfth Night twins fatefully separated at birth, struggling to meet again over the dispatch box. They look alike when they scowl, they have the same snappy dress sense, mystifying charisma and, until recently, the same hairdresser. And while Prescott is allowed to be himself as the meaty Labour hit-man, will Ann have to go on a diet? What is the 21st-century image of Woman as Leader?
The truth is that, whatever her size, Ann Widdecombe is a terrible role model for women. She is not interested in enabling women within her party. She does not support all-women shortlists for safe seats and is a workaholic with no family life and, as far as one can tell, no personal relationship.
These things matter because the most important issue for women in the new century is how to change a man's world - and there is no world more masculine than politics. Men succeed by focusing on their career and leaving their wife to provide love, family, culture and pleasure. Women succeed by focusing on their career and amputating the rest.
Of course some women seem to have it all, but they are few and exceptional. Women need a world in which we can be ordinarily good at fulfilling work, without neglecting our families or ourselves.
Reform of the Commons is urgent. While I understand that attendance at Westminster is important, I do not understand why it is fine to sit in the bar all night, ignore the debate, rush to vote, then collapse home after midnight, when the whole thing could have been followed by webcam and voted by email. We have the technology, let's use it.
The sad thing is that many MPs don't want to go home. Men like staying out all night, especially if they can pretend to be working. Ann Widdecombe's life is politics and the church, so as long as she is free on Sundays, she's not going to care where she is the rest of the week.
I find it strange that a woman who became a Catholic because she could not tolerate women priests sees no contradiction in her ambition to run the country.
Maybe I don't find it strange. Like Margaret Thatcher, Widdecombe is a man in drag. Her gender is a shell. Inside, she is stuffed with masculine values. She wants to be a man in a man's world. The carelessness of her appearance is not a wonderful indifference to the pressure put on women to look nice. It is a sad indifference to herself. Ann the politician doesn't care about Ann the woman, and it shows.
I have never liked the male arrogance that says: "I may be a fat slob, but I've got the power and the money, so too bad." Every day we see the depressing sight of a lovely woman on the arm of a gross old walrus. The feminist response was to urge women not to care about their appearance either. This is wrong. We can all look good in our own way - healthy, groomed, in clothes that suit us and are a kind of respect to other people. Equality is not about behaving like men, any more than it is behaving for men.
So what are we going to do, girls? How can we make the 21st century a place for all of us, men and women alike, without turning women into distortions of themselves?
I don't have an easy answer, but we could start by lobbying our MPs for parliamentary reform. Or would you prefer the Widdecombe way?
