I sat down with the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and Campaign Manager for Norwich North a couple of days ago to find out her thoughts now the immediate post-byelection glow has faded. The Conservatives won decisively, but why? And does the election of the youngest ever female Tory MP mark a genuine milestone?

Ben Duckworth: How are you feeling now you’ve had time to contemplate the byelection results?

Theresa May: Obviously looking at how it went, I was very pleased on the day. Chloe will be a very good MP, she is a great asset. I think there were some key differences between how we ran the campaign and how other parties ran their campaigns that I think were part of the reason that we did so well.

BD: What differences were these? Negative campaigning?

TM: There was a negative campaign from others but especially Labour and the Lib Dems. I think that was one of the key issues which explain why we did so well — there was a desire for change and to send a message to Gordon Brown. The other key issue was that it was the first election against the background of the expenses issue and there was a very real impact on the doorstep: partly because the byelection was caused by Labour telling Ian Gibson he had to stand down — he had a lot of personal support as an MP. There were some who felt let down by him because of what he had done with his expenses, and others who had felt that the Labour Party had done the wrong thing.

BD: What examples of negative campaigning were there?

TM: The Lib Dems made claims, with Chloe working at Deloittes since she graduated for 5 years, such as saying she was a Westminster insider. They tried to claim that we had hidden the fact that Deloittes had seconded her to work for the Conservative Party on implementation of policy — yet we hadn’t. It had been on our website and in our literature. Midway through the campaign, I wrote it on a letter to their election agent — there was no attempt to hide it at all. They were trying to build up an image of her that was based on falsehoods.

BD: Are you pleased with the media coverage of Chloe Smith after the results or do you fear she may have already been pigeonholed simply as a young Tory woman before she has sat as an MP?

TM: I am pleased because she is a bright young woman - she has shown her abilities in terms of being an MP via the campaign she has been doing in the 18 months prior to the election as a prospective candidate. So I don’t think that pigeonholes her in a sense, and I think it is a good sign of how the Conservative Party has changed — since when she takes her seat in October, the youngest member of the House of Commons will be a Tory and a female - a few years ago, you would not have expected that to be the case.

BD: There are only 17 female Conservative MPs [Theresa points out it is now 18 with Chloe Smith’s victory]... and an optimistic prediction of around 60 after the general election which isn’t really that many — so is it really a milestone?

TM: It is a milestone. It is a huge step as going from 18 to 60. It will be a significant change in terms of the number of women on the Conservative benches. It will change the look and feel of the party, but we recognise that there is more to be done, we still need to keep on working on this.

BD: Given the objection to positive discrimination, shortlists and set quotas of women within the Conservative Party — how do you continue with it?

TM: I think there are a number of things. First of all, we are still examining our selection process to make sure that there is no gender bias in the way the election process happens. We have done quite a lot on that but we are still constantly looking at it and asking ourselves if there is still a lot left to do — that is the first thing.

The second thing is that for any party there will come a point when the number of women MPs is such that it ceases to be an issue about trying to encourage people to select women MPs because it becomes more natural — and actually I think Chloe’s election will help that because a lot of people within the party came up to help and saw a bright young female candidate and I think that will help the process for people to think that that is the sort of candidate they can select.

BD: Are greater numbers of female MPs going to be from diverse backgrounds?

TM: Part of the job the party has in the future is to look at diversity of backgrounds across the board. One of the things that Women2Win, the organisation that I co-founded, is doing is to encourage women from the education and health-care sectors. There is a big issue though that goes across all candidates from all parties, and I raised this at the Speaker’s conference, which is that it is difficult to be a candidate financially. It is quite hard as you have to pay out quite a bit in order to fight for a seat. If, for example, you are a nurse, it is very difficult financially for you to be able to support that — so I think it is something that Parliament has to consider as it is a genuine issue.

BD: Is Parliament a female-friendly place in terms of work and the culture? Isn’t the macho culture off-putting?

TM: I think the macho nature is helped by the media who tend to report it in macho terms and want to see it as macho combat yet often do not appreciate the rapier-like questioning that can often occur! But I think that it has changed over time. It is difficult for me to say because when I came in 1997, there was a big influx of Labour women so I don’t know what it was like pre-97. My view is that you just go in and do your job to the best of your ability, so I have not personally come across that sort of male machismo. There is a challenge for women in Parliament and in business generally which is to be able to do the job as they want to do it rather than feeling that they have to behave like the men.

BD: What lessons have you learnt from the Norwich North byelection?

TM: It showed us several things: first of all it showed us that parties need to recognise that the expenses issue is still out there and parties need to respond to that. We have shown in Norwich North that we were able to respond to it. I think we still need to think about those issues and about how we can build trust with the people.

For example, Chloe did three things that I think were important in that response. One was that she published her own expenses pledge about how she would deal with expenses as a Member of Parliament, about transparency and also about appointing independent auditors to look into her accounts and expense claims.

Secondly we did something that a major political party hasn’t done in the past, the Green Party developed a Clean Campaign pledge and on approaching us to sign up to it — we agreed. Normally a major party does not respond to something like that from one of the smaller parties. We were the only major party to sign up to it. Labour published their own pledge and the Liberal Democrats simply didn’t sign.