A Dutch Calvinist political party which denies the equality of women and which until 2006 banned women from party membership has now become a member of the British Conservative’s group (the European Conservatives and Reformists) at the European Parliament.

In the last parliament, the Tories refused to admit the Dutch Reformed Political Party (SGP) because of the party’s attitude towards women.

However as Breitbart London reported yesterday, the Tories have welcomed Bastiaan Belder, the one Member of the European Parliament the party has at the Strasbourg-based assembly. This is despite the SGP still holding to its Bible-based principle that men and women have different places in society and are not equal.

The Tory partnership with the SGP will be a particular embarrassment to the prime minister because it comes just as he is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet in order to include a female minister in every department. Cameron has been stung by Labour party accusations of “sexism” because he currently has just one senior minister who is female.

Now, Conservative representatives in the European Parliament are sitting with a party that was founded in 1918 to oppose female suffrage. The party’s political positions are determined by the Bible. It believes that “the husband is the head of the wife” and that “Every emancipation effort that ignores the God-given place and vocation of men and women is revolutionary and should be vigorously combated.” 

In 2010 a judge decreed that the SGP had to start involving women, though the party made clear it believes that participation of women in representative and administrative political institutions is “incompatible with [a] woman’s calling.”  

In the last parliament Belder sat with the group formed around the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which pushed the Conservatives into third place in the elections to the European Parliament last month. Since then the Tories have been working to poach members from the UKIP caucus, the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group, in an effort to leave Nigel Farage and his MEPs isolated at the assembly.

This “poaching policy” has led to the Tories welcoming to the ECR the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim Danish People’s Party, also a former ally of UKIP which in the last parliament the Conservatives considered “unacceptable.” 

Besides his party’s bizarre approach to women, Belder is known for his staunchly pro-Israel views.