Time for more women leaders?

Two impressive performances have left me wondering whether we need more women at the top of politics. Not just because equality of rights is desirable, which it is, but also because they seem to be doing a lot better than most of the men.

That’s not all women leaders. Theresa May was convinced that she was right and, impervious to all calls to change course, steered her government straight onto the rocks. And Margaret Thatcher set a new benchmark in the kind of sociopathic government that has no compassion for the victims of the suffering it inflicts. No. Some women leaders are admirable, others anything but.

The two women who impressed me this week did so because the greatest measure of a politician’s worth is how they react to a crisis, and they have risen strongly to the challenge Coronavirus presents.

Neither of them is Jacinda Ardern. As I’ve written before, Ardern may be the most outstanding leader the world has today. My only regret is that, in New Zealand, she leads a country of just 5 million people. Imagine if she were leading the country of 330 million, currently mismanaged by the overgrown toddler in the White House?

So here are the two other women I feel are handling things well.

One was Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister. I was impressed by her quiet, firm and yet encouraging way of delivering bad news. She tweeted:

I know lockdown gets tougher as we head into the weekend, and the weather gets better (even by Scottish standards). But it really matters that we stick with it – we’re seeing some progress but it will be quickly reversed if we ease up. So PLEASE, #StayHome – it will save lives.

A little humour helps communicate a message – we all know the (not entirely undeserved) reputation of the weather in Scotland. As for the message itself, it’s firm but optimistic. It’s what one expects from a true leader.

She reminds me of a particularly potent speech by Churchill. He made it after the British victory at the battle of El Alamein, significant because it was the first time the German army had been defeated on land in World War 2, but still minor because the North African theatre was something of a sideshow compared to the titanic clashes that were taking place in Russia.

Churchill knew how to present the success in a way that was encouraging without exaggerating its importance:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Isn’t that what Sturgeon was saying? The lockdown’s getting tougher, but we’re seeing progress. It isn’t time to relax, but there’s reason for hope.

Merkel, Ardern, Sturgeon
Good to have more of them

Funnily enough, the other woman leader who impressed me used words even closer to Churchill’s. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, told her Parliament:

We are not in the final phase of the pandemic, but still at the beginning. Let us not now gamble away our achievements and run the risk of a setback.

Now there’s a tough statement. Germany’s not even at the end of the beginning, but still at the beginning itself. I’m sure she’s right. I wish some of the men we have leading major nations were prepared to be as open about where we stand.

Donald Trump, for instance, keeps trying to undermine the lockdown restrictions, even supporting demonstrators who (rashly) turn out to protest against them. We know that he believes he needs the economy humming again if he is to have a chance of re-election in November, and to achieve that, he seems willing to sacrifice more lives. That’s despite the US already having more Covid-19 deaths than any other, country in part because of his delays in launching counter-measures.

In the UK, Boris Johnson also worked hard to undermine social-distancing steps. On 3 March, he boasted that he was still shaking hands, even in the hospital he’d just visited where CVid-19 patients were being treated. Providing a useful demonstration of how irresponsible that was, he fell sick with the virus himself. Since he refuses to hand over to someone else even temporarily, but hasn’t been able to work for the last three weeks, the UK is now facing this crisis with no one to exercise the authority of a Prime Minister.

Not that I’m calling on him to hand over to a woman. That might mean the present Home Secretary, Priti Patel. If anyone could make Maggie Thatcher look like an exemplar of gentleness and empathy, it would be Patel.

Thatcher, May, Patel
No need for any more of them

No, not all female leaders are admirable. Just as not all male leaders are as lamentable as Bush or Boris: Sánchez in Spain or Conte in Italy, among others, have shown guts and determination in dealing with the virus, even if they were late getting started. But the women have been more uniformly impressive.

I’m not alone in noticing this. Jon Henley and Eleanor Ainge Roy in the Guardian, for instance, point out that only some of the male leaders, but all of the women, have handled the epidemic well.

That sounds like a lesson we ought to learn.

An exceptional woman taking on the pandemic

A great many nations must be looking at New Zealand and envying that country its outstanding Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Jacinda Ardern after the Mosque shootings
Exactly the right mix of kindness and steely firmness

You may remember how well she reacted to the Islamophobic shootings at two Mosques in Christchurch. She came through with exceptional tenderness, hugging survivors and the bereaved, but also with all the firmness needed. She said of the killer “we will give him nothing, not even his name” when she reported on the incident to Parliament and, indeed, did not name him.

She followed up with tightened firearm regulations, proving that she has real steel in her when necessary, achieving more than Trump ever even attempted (Obama tried but was denied) in the face of the terrible shootings in the US.

How much we yearn for an Ardern in other countries.

Take the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, hospitalised for CVid-19 infection. I’m glad he no longer needs Intensive Care, and he has my sympathy while he remains hospitalised. However, that’s neither more nor less sympathy than any of the other 16,000 or so patients admitted to hospital in the UK for Covid-19 treatment.

The Romans used to say that you should say nothing but good of the dead. In Johnson’s case, people have been quick to point out to me that I should say nothing but good of the sick either.

This reminds of the time, over four decades ago, when I was working in the British Civil Service, and one of my jobs was to track down fraud on National Insurance benefits. In a training class, I listened to ways of tracking down such nefarious behaviour by, among others, pensioners.

“We go after pensioners?” I asked, surprised.

“You don’t think,” the trainer replied, “that someone who’s spent half a century being a rogue is going to mend his ways on his sixty-fifth birthday, do you?”

Yes, I feel sorry for Boris. But the fact that he got sick hasn’t stopped him being a self-serving, narcissistic liar. And I feel a little frustrated by the general consensus out there that I should stop saying so until he’s fully recovered.

Fintan O’Toole, an excellent journalist who usually works on the Irish Times but also contributes to the Guardian, sums up the situation perfectly in a piece about ‘British exceptionalism’ has been exposed as a myth by Coronavirus. As he points out, Boris delayed for far too long in addressing the Coronavirus outbreak. He also seemed to apologise for imposing the partial lockdown now in place in the UK. In particular, he seemed concerned about restricting the fundamental right of British citizens to go to pubs, as though there were such a right.

As O’Toole suggests, it’s clear that his real worry was that the measure would prove unpopular. So he was anxious about losing votes, as though that mattered more than saving lives. Which, for him, perhaps it does. Certainly, lives have been unnecessarily lost because of his reluctance to take the required action.

I don’t pretend that the Prime Minister of my new home country, Spain, was faultless in his handling of the crisis. On the contrary, he was far too late off the mark. But once he grasped the full import of the crisis, he introduced a far stricter lockdown than in Britain.

The lockdown has been painful, but it seems to be working. For nearly a week now, we’ve seen the numbers of new cases and new deaths falling day by day. Boris could have seen how Italy and Spain reacted (but was he looking?) and learned the lesson (but is he open to being taught?)

Obviously, Donald Trump is a far worse case still. In denial for weeks, pretending that the epidemic was of little importance, taking the wrong action (such as banning flights from China) when he took any action at all, repeatedly trying to belittle the significance of what was going on. Why, he’s even appointed as ‘Coronavirus Tsar’ one Peter Navarro, who has no medical expertise whatever.

And there are plenty of other examples of utter failures in positions of leadership around the world.

How did Ardern react to the pandemic?

She has gone for an ‘elimination’ strategy, as explained by two epidemiologists, Michael Baker and Nick Wilson, also writing in the Guardian. The aim is to stop all transmission of the disease within New Zealand. Returning travellers are being stopped at the borders and quarantined. The whole nation is under lockdown. Meanwhile, the authorities are tracking the cases that remain in the community, with a view to treating those patients before others are infected.

That’s what it means to have a leader in charge. She has the steel to impose a full lockdown. She has the determination to apply the strongest possible approach to the virus – elimination rather than mere containment. It may, of course, still not work, but it’s looking good at the moment: case numbers are falling and so far, there have been just four deaths.

Some will say that New Zealand has the advantage of being an island nation. That’s true enough. But then what’s the UK’s excuse? Cases and deaths are both still rising fast there.

The example set by New Zealand depends on having a Jacinda Ardern in charge, and they’re sadly rare. Most of us are stuck with a Trump or a Boris. But that only underlines how important it is for us all to grasp what might seem a truism: we need to focus on finding leaders capable of leadership. Because for some time now, we seem to have selected our top politicians on other criteria.

And how well would you say that’s going?

Hey, New Zealand: couldn't you lend us Jacinda for a while?

It’s a tale of two accidental leaders…

Jacinda Ardern was never meant to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. Or at least not yet, not so early as to make her the youngest in a century and a half. She was serving as Deputy Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party when, just seven weeks ahead of the 2017 General Election, the then Leader, Andrew Little, stood down in the face of the dire poll standing of the party.

That’s not an issue for the British Labour Party under its present leadership. It trails a thoroughly discredited Tory government in the polls, at a point when it needs to be well ahead to stand any chance of winning the next election. But Corbynists shrug such matters off. There’ll be a surge, they say, as there was last time. They ignore the fact that the surge wasn’t enough to win and only produced a defeat less drastic than had been feared.

Funnily enough, Corbyn was an accidental leader too. He only stood for the leadership because no one else on the left was prepared to throw his name into the hat. He had no expectation of winning and, indeed, only made it onto the ballot because political opponents within Labour agreed to nominate him as a way of giving the left a chance to be in the game. They didn’t think he’d win either, and how they must be regretting it now.

As it happens, Ardern didn’t win the General Election. She came second with 46 parliamentary seats to the National (conservative) Party’s 56. But coalition negotiations allowed her to assemble a government and she took office. Since then, she’s impressed again and again, including in her personal behaviour: giving birth while in office in a way that charmed the nation.

At no time has she been more impressive than in response to the dire events that took place last Friday, 15 March. A new and far more dreadful Ides of March than those that marked the assassination of Julius Caesar. In Christchurch, a terrorist opened fire in two Mosques killing 50 worshippers and injuring many others.

Her statement to Parliament moved me to tears. She found an extraordinarily powerful way of expressing her total solidarity with the victims and their friends or relatives. It was a moving statement that said that these Muslim immigrants belonged to New Zealand and New Zealand belonged to them. It was a highly effective way of rejecting the views of anyone who might be inclined to nurse  xenophobic feelings towards the victims, a sense that it was tragic but nonetheless, they were somehow wrong to have come to New Zealand, that they were in some sense responsible for the attack on them.

She said:

We cannot know your grief, but we can walk with you at every stage. We can. And we will, surround you with aroha, manaakitanga and all that makes us, us. Our hearts are heavy but our spirit is strong.

Jacinda Ardern with the victims
Showing aroha, manaakitanga and ... leadership

She spoke of “us”, embracing all New Zealanders. And she underlined the message by using the Maori words for love and a much deeper sense of hospitality. The Prime Minister was saying categorically and clearly that the victims belonged in New Zealand and deserved its welcome.

Talking of the presumed perpetrator who, following her example, will not be named here, she said:

A 28-year-old man – an Australian citizen – has been charged with one count of murder. Other charges will follow. He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand. The families of the fallen will have justice.

He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety.

And that is why you will never hear me mention his name.

He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist.

But he will, when I speak, be nameless.

And to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them.

He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.

I find it hard to read these words, courageous, outspoken, resolute, without feeling a pricking of tears in my eyes.

Compare them with what Jeremy Corbyn said when asked whether, in a second referendum, he might vote for Brexit:

It depends on what the choice is in front of us. If we’ve got a good deal in which we can have a dynamic relationship with Europe which is all the trading relationships and so on that might be a good way forward that unites the country.

“It depends”. A prevaricating, vacillating reply. And why does he make it? Because he thinks there is a Brexit deal that can unite the country. Which means he wants to pull in the xenophobes who voted to leave the EU out of a dislike of immigrants. Where Ardern tells xenophobes that New Zealand stands for different values, Corbyn tries to appease them.

He must know he can’t. Any deal that he would call ‘good’ would involve a softer Brexit that leave voters would regard as a betrayal. He’s making the same error so many others have made before him, not least David Cameron who called the Brexit referendum: he’s throwing raw meat to people who will only demand more, when they see that pushing their demands gives results.

Ardern stood firm and she’ll be admired for it. Corbyn yielded and he’ll be despised. Two accidental leaders, but only one is truly a leader, showing that accidents can turn out well on some occasions and pitifully badly on others.

How I wish we could borrow her for Britain, to lead Labour, and eventually the country. And send Corbyn back to his allotment to tend to his vegetables. He’d be much happier. As would Britain.

Alas, New Zealand wouldn’t let her go. But can we perhaps can find her like ourselves? At least she’s shown us what to look for.

New Zealand an antidote to a toxic trend still sadly topical today

There’s a striking frieze inside Milan Central station, a relief that has a certain attractive quality at first glance. It’s only when one comes to look at it more closely that one notices details that are far less attractive. And it’s no relief at all.

Elaborate carvings look down on the entrance lobby of Milan station

At either end of the frieze is a symbol that it’s hard not to recognise. The symbol of magisterial authority in ancient Rome: a bound bundle of rods with an axe projecting from the middle. It symbolised power, the axe underlining that it went as far as life and death.

Striking detail: a symbol we might have hoped behind us

And what was the bundle called? Why, a fasces. It gave its name to the movement that adopted it as symbol in twentieth-century Italy, Mussolini’s Fascism.

In a sense, that’s not inappropriate. Mussolini built the Central Station (well, to be accurate, he got some other people to build it for him). He put his party’s symbols among the decorations. If we look at the entire frieze again, we can see that there’s a blank space in the middle, clearly designed for lettering. Presumably once it contained some uplifting slogan of the Fascist state, urging the people to sacrifice to the glory of the nation. That might possibly be in war, that most glorious of all Fascist actions, as long as, like station-building, you could get other people to engage in it for you.

The words have been expunged. But presumably the cleaners of Fascist symbolism didn’t feel the fasces themselves could be removed without damaging the entire frieze, so they remain in place. Which is particularly apt, since it underlines a fundamental point: there are certain lethal viruses that simply cannot be entirely wiped out but lie dormant for decades or even centuries, before bursting forth again in some new and terrible contagion.

That’s certainly the case of Fascism. Around the world, we have seen that phenomenon of the thirties emerging once more: the impoverished, the left-behind, the disappointed entitled, rally around the providential man who voices their hatred of others – above all, of the Other – and promises them quick fixes to their suffering which they can never deliver. And they get elected.

We’ve seen it in Trump. We’ve seen it in surge of support for the far Right in Germany and Austria. We’ve seen it in the move or Brexit in Britain.

Brexit’s a particularly striking case. Its essence is xenophobia, fear of the foreigner. Some defend it as a way to protect jobs or wages; all the evidence is that the damage to both has been done by British forces not foreigners. Others defend it as a means to protect workers against a club of capitalists; all the evidence is that workers have gained more rights through EU membership than they’ve ever lost.

It even creates strange bed fellows, or perhaps I should say boatmates. One of the more remarkable photos of the Brexit campaign showed Kate Hoey, left-wing Labour MP, literally in the same boat as Nigel Farage, like her a leader of the Brexit movement, and a worthy heir, if ever there was one, of the men who proudly made the fasces their symbol in the 1920s: nationalistic, Islamophobic, a hater anything that deviates from a strict interpretation of the white, English-speaking mainstream.

All in the same boat? Or getting on swimmingly while making the country sink?
Far left and far right together in the toxic mix that Brexit made

How did she end up in the boat with him? That’s the toxic nature of Brexit. More broadly, it’s the toxic effect of all those nationalisms now spreading their tentacles around the world. Again.

Curiously, I saw the Fasces in Milan last week. The next morning, I discovered that the centrist, moderate Labourite Jacinda Ardern would be leading the next government of New Zealand. Here are a few predictions I make with absolute certainty:

• The same people who would climb into a boat with Nigel Farage will criticise her for forming a coalition with New Zealand First, an unpleasant nationalistic party. I agree with their concerns, because she’ll surely have to meet its leader Winston Peters on some unpleasant anti-immigration measures. I can only hope that as a small minority in the coalition, New Zealand First will have its worst poison drawn. I’d also remind those who like to walk shoulder to shoulder with Kate Hoey that pots have to be careful what they say about kettles, and Farage was far more than a minority partner in the Brexit coalition.
• Ardern will set out to do some good, as she’s told us: she wants to build “a country where our environment is protected, where we look after the most vulnerable, where we support our families, where we make sure people have the most basic of needs, like a roof over their head.” Her goals will be far more limited than many of us would like, and she’ll achieve far less than even she wants, but she will do some good. That’s because she’s in government, and government can do things, when oppositions can only proclaim them.

Her arrangement with Peters means that Ardern is at best containing right-wing populism rather than blocking it. However, in a world where a Trump can win the White House, that feels like a welcome change. 

It was particularly welcome to me after seeing the Fasces, still hanging on, inside Milan station.