IF there’s one thing we can take away from Prince Andrew’s toe-curlingly awful interview with the BBC journalist Emily Maitlis it’s that he really doesn’t give too many damns about women or the way they are treated.

He is not alone. In another interview broadcast on television over the weekend American tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri told how Prime Minister Boris Johnson treated her like “a fleeting one-night stand” after details of the business dealings they had when he was Mayor of London became public.

Though the businesswoman had been friends with Mr Johnson, who regularly made visits to her flat to learn about the intricacies of IT, she says he dropped her like, well, like “some gremlin” after the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) became involved. As questions were raised about whether Ms Arcuri’s business had received any favours it wasn’t entitled to and the propriety of the situation, Mr Johnson made like the cad he is and ditched her without so much as the courtesy of a four-day dinner to ease the blow.

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Ms Arcuri is understandably upset and, after hinting heavily that the pair’s relationship was more involved than the computing-class explanation they would have us all believe, used her television appearance to send a little message to Mr Johnson himself.

“I’ve been nothing but loyal, faithful, supportive and a true confidante of yours,” she told him through the camera’s eye.

“I’ve kept your secrets, and I’ve been your friend. I don’t understand why you’ve blocked me and ignored me as if I was some fleeting one-night stand or some girl that you picked up at a bar because I wasn’t, and you know that. I’m terribly heartbroken by the way that you have cast me aside like I am some gremlin.”

Okay, so she might have gone a little heavy on the drama. And there’s no question that she benefited from her friendship with Mr Johnson. She did, after all, receive rather a lot of public money and access to trade missions to Tel Aviv and New York after he intervened on her behalf.

But cutting her off at the first sign that details of their relationship could be damaging to him and, as Ms Arcuri termed it, “his quest for greatness” is hardly the mark of a man – a man in public office, no less – who has, as Mr Johnson would have it, behaved “entirely in the proper way”.

Not that we should be surprised. Mr Johnson is, after all, as famous for his seemingly insatiable appetites as he is for his performance in the political sphere. Some might even say that finding ways of appeasing those appetites are where his true talents lie.

Indeed, this is a man who in his youth thought nothing of dumping one wife in favour of another, already-pregnant, one; who allegedly made a habit out of squeezing junior female colleagues’ legs under dinner tables; and who has impregnated so many people while maintaining the trappings of wedlock he apparently doesn’t know how many children he has. This is not, in short, a man who has bothered to even pretend that women are deserving of his respect.

I know what many of you are thinking: what does it matter what Mr Johnson gets up to in his private life when it’s how he wants to run the country that we should be concerning ourselves with? Boys will be boys after all, and if he likes to unwind with a bit of slap and tickle after a hard week on the doorsteps who are we to judge?

Yes, well those of you who are thinking that would think that, wouldn’t you? But there are plenty others among us – women like me and the men we are proud to rub shoulders with – for whom the Prime Minister’s behaviour towards women matters deeply, not just because it shows what kind of a man he is, but because the kind of a man he is shows what kind of a leader he is.

And, guess what? We are more than a little bit turned off by his dissembling, philandering, self-serving ways.

If you want to know why that might matter, just take a look at what respected political scientist Professor John Curtice has had to say in the past few days about female voters potentially holding the key to whether Mr Johnson will be able to maintain his grip on power at the upcoming General Election.

Having studied the most recent findings of a variety of opinion polls, the University of Strathclyde professor said that on average 13 per cent of voters have yet to make up their minds on who to vote for come December 12, with more women than men falling into the undecided category. With the Conservatives’ lead over Labour sitting at 13 points among men but just nine points among women, you can see why being led by a man whose attitudes towards women are questionable at best and misogynistic at worst might be an issue for the Tories. As Professor Curtice put it, those women could well erode Mr Johnson’s lead.

READ MORE: Professor John Curtice: It would take 'little' for Scotland to be transformed'

It is a problem that has not been lost on some Tory women. Back in August Women2Win director Virginia Crosbie, who has since been announced as the Conservative candidate for the Welsh consistency of Ynys Môn, wrote in a piece for the Conservative Home website that a Tory victory “depends on women voters”.

The party had been damaged in 2017, she said, because “for the first time ever, a smaller proportion of women voted Conservative than men”. “In the last six decades women have tended to support the Conservatives slightly more than men, and as a party we have come to rely on the women’s vote,” she said.

In her piece Ms Crosbie said it was not quite clear why her party had been losing the women’s vote: “Is it because women have been disproportionately affected by austerity? Is it because women are more worried than men about crime, the NHS and the future of the next generation?” This time round the answer could be a whole lot easier to grasp.

It has come as a surprise to no one that the Prince Andrews and Boris Johnsons of this world think they can treat women as they please and carry on regardless, doing their princely thing and following their supposedly predestined path to greatness without so much as a second thought for the damage they may have left in their wake.

It looks like undecided women have it in their power to tell them that’s not alright; that the time for treating women like dirt and expecting to get away with it is up. If there’s any justice in the world they will go to the polls and do just that.