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Blair Babes or Blair's Babes are the 101 female Members of Parliament from the Labour Party elected to the British House of Commons in Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997.〔A headline in ''The Sun'' punningly referred to "Blair's backwenchers": (Drink, deception and the death of an MP ), ''The Guardian'', 6 February 2007.〕 The 1997 general election saw more women elected to the House of Commons than ever - 120, exactly double the 60 elected at the 1992 general election. 101 of these women MPs were Labour Party politicians. There were also 13 Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats, and three from other parties (including Speaker Betty Boothroyd, previously a Labour politician). Images of the new Prime Minister Tony Blair with 96〔The five absent female Labour MPs were Kate Hoey, Clare Short, Glenda Jackson, Lynne Jones and Julie Morgan.〕 female Labour MPs on the steps of Church House in Westminster, were widely publicised,〔(All-women shortlists clear new hurdle ), BBC News, 21 December 2001 (including iconic photograph of Blair Babes)〕 giving rise to the term ''Blair Babes''. Expectations were high that the substantial increase in female representation in the House of Commons would lead to changes in the style and conduct of legislative business. However, many of the new female MPs grew disillusioned with the lifestyle of an MP, and nine "Blair Babes" either chose not to stand or lost their seats in the 2001 general election. Despite two female MPs winning by-elections between 1997 and 2001, and other women being elected, the total number of female MPs fell to 118 at the 2001 general election. A further 22 "Blair Babes" stood down or lost their seats at the 2005 general election, although the number of female MPs increased again to a new record of 127. The term ''Blair Babe'' has been condemned by Polly Toynbee as a "casual, misogynist tag."〔(Better than men ), ''The Guardian'', 16 March 2001.〕 In September 2000 ''The Times'' noted in a diary piece that the term was beginning to "lose its lustre" with Margaret Moran, MP for Luton South, describing the 'perception that the 1997 intake of female Labour MPs are all robotic clones' as "complete tosh".〔Mark Inglefield. "A fair cop", ''The Times'', London, 2 September 2000, pg. 22〕 Moran said that she herself was not a Blair Babe, but a "Blair Witch".〔 The sociological implications of the term and the experiences of Labour's women MPs were extensively analyzed by Sarah Childs in her 2004 book ''New Labour's Women MPs: Women Representing Women''. ==List of Blair babes== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Blair Babe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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