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.

Poor little Britain

It’s cold out there at the moment.

Sean Bean in Game of Thrones: “winter is coming”

Still, it is November, in the Northern Hemisphere, so we have to expect temperatures to be pretty uncomfortable. And at least we know that there are only three weeks to go before the days start to grow longer again. While the cold will be even more bitter, at least the lighter evenings will contain a promise of better times to come.

So much, at least, for the physical weather. When it comes to its status in the world, the cold has only just started to grip Britain. It will deepen a great deal further in the coming years, and not start to recede until British people at last emerge from the illusions behind which they prefer to hide.

Most central among these is the sense that their country is still a world power. A lion whose roar is heard around the globe. Some will cling on to that belief for a long time, but others are beginning to take the tough object lessons reality is delivering to them.

For many months, the hard Brexiters in government have been insisting that they will not move on the amount Britain will have to pay the EU on leaving. This is the so-called ‘divorce bill’. While a member of the EU, Britain entered into a number of commitments many of which involved the payment of money. Among other things, there are people who have retired from the EU Civil Service, to whose pensions Britain pledged to contribute. There is a sense in Brussels that these commitments have to be honoured despite Britain’s departure.

The hard Brexiters have been insisting that the figure should be low.

Take the case of Priti Patel. She had to resign from her post as International Development minister earlier this month, having demonstrated her humility in public service by conducting her own foreign policy while on holiday in Israel, where she had meetings with senior ministers including Benjamin Netanyahu, without reference to any other member of the government including the Foreign Secretary. Demonstrating the diplomatic self-control which make her such a loss to foreign affairs, she announced at the weekend that the EU could just “sod off” with their demands for a divorce bill.

It must have come as quite a blow to find that her erstwhile boss, the Prime Minister Theresa May, is now talking about paying as much as £50bn, perhaps twice the sum many had hoped. Ultimately, of course, there will be a compromise and a sensible figure will be agreed, whether near the £50n level or not. The key point is that Britain blinked first, and had to. In a doubtless unwelcome reminder to Brexiters, May had to admit that Britain is not in the driving seat, it can’t call the shots, it has to move towards the EU before the EU will move towards us.

Then came the affair of the Trump far-right Tweets. When Britain leaves the EU, it will be more dependent than ever on the US. President Trump (it still feels slightly unbelievable to write those two words together) early on made it clear that he was keen to offer Britain a trade deal, a piece of news Brexiters reacted to with glee. Sadly, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary was in the UK at the beginning of this month. He stressed that the US was ready to give Brexit Britain a trade deal, but we might just have to make a few minor accommodations. Like giving up on European-style regulation – shorthand for our having to abandon our unreasonable demands for our food to be edible.

Just over two weeks later his boss, the President himself, decided that it would be judicious to retweet three tweets with Islamophobic videos attached.

Even the most elegant of houses has to have a sewage system. All nations have to have their political cesspools. Britain’s is called ‘Britain First’, a neo-Fascist grouplet of no significance in our politics. Indeed, the woman who put up the tweets the President chose to pass on, chalked up the triumphant total of 56 votes in a run for parliament. Just to give some perspective on that figure, the winner of the election took 16,897 votes.

She is now facing criminal charges for religiously aggravated harassment and for using threatening and abusive language.

This is the person whose views the President decided to endorse.

In another example of our unreasonable attachment to certain standards, many of us in Britain rather resented this behaviour. The Prime Minister isn’t famed for her courage in standing up to Trump – she was the first head of government to visit him in the White House and issued him with an invitation to a State visit immediately, without the customary waiting period we generally like to take to see what kind of a President we are dealing with.

Yet even she felt she should speak out this time, telling Trump explicitly that he had been wrong. His reaction? To tell her to mind her own business.

When Home Secretary Amber Rudd spoke to the House of Commons about the Trump row, she repeated her boss’s rebuke to Trump. But then she went on to remind her listeners that the relationship with the States is vital. Which is true, and particularly now. But does she mean that we have to be careful what we say about him – even when he endorses our Fascists?

Many have been asking whether the invitation to Trump for the State Visit would be cancelled. It looks as though what Britain’s going to do is leave the invitation out there, but simply fail to set a date for it. Which, if you’re feeling generous, is a classic British compromise; if you’re feeling a little more severe, you might view it as something more like moral cowardice.

But what choice does Britain have? We’ve chosen Brexit which means we’ve chosen dependence on the States. Even under Trump.

Game of Thrones got it right. Winter is coming, and it’s going to be cold. For a very long time.