A new breed of leadership candidate: Theresa May puts England on the verge of becoming a femocracy

March of the Merkelators - with impressive CVs, steely demeanours and practical shoes, a new breed of leader just wants to get the job done. I vote for the competent candidate, says Rosamund Urwin
Theresa May arriving for a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street
PA Wire
Rosamund Urwin1 July 2016

"Perhaps we’ve had enough of these boys messing about,” Anna Soubry suggested yesterday. The Conservative MP for Broxtowe was on Radio 4’s The World At One calling for Theresa May to lead her own party, and proposing Angela Eagle take over from Jeremy Corbyn at Labour’s helm.

Boris Johnson, politics’ blond bombshell, had just withdrawn from the Tory race, leaving May the frontrunner. Ladbrokes is now giving odds of 4/9 on the Home Secretary triumphing.

Could England be on the verge of becoming a femocracy, with a women Prime Minister and leader of the opposition? We’d be copying Scotland, where the SNP, Labour and Tories all have women at the top already. And while there’s currently only a single female leader in the G7 — German chancellor Angela Merkel — theoretically, when the group meets next year in Sicily, there could be a matriarchal trio: Merkel, May and Hillary Clinton.

This week it has mostly been women who’ve stood strong, while men cowered; Nicola Sturgeon is another of the politicians who’s come out of the past six days with her reputation elevated.

Merkel, May, Clinton and Eagle seem to come from a similar mould. They’re authoritative, tough, have far more impressive CVs than their rivals, project an air of competence and seem a safe pair of hands for a tumultuous time — the kind of person you want at the tiller of the boat during a perfect storm. As Justine Greening said when she publicly backed May on Wednesday, it is the Home Secretary’s “professionalism and steel” that she admires.

Clinton always knew her trump card is that she’s the leader you want picking up the White House phone at 3am. And yes, you could say they’re reassuringly dull; the most avant-garde element of May is her fancy footwear, a penchant for leopardprint pumps.

Merkel has been in office for more than a decade, and there’s speculation that she may soon step down. Comparisons between May and Merkel are already being made, prompting some feminists to bemoan the way we always compare women with other women. But we still don’t have many models of female leadership to aspire to. Merkel could be seen as the forerunner.

Our longest-serving Home Secretary in more than a century is the quiet woman of British politics. She’s industrious: toiling on her red boxes until 3am and has a keen eye for detail. But she also knows how to stick the knife in, quipping about Boris’s negotiating chances in Brussels: “The last time he did a deal with the Germans he came back with three nearly new water cannons.” Which, incidentally, she then ruled he couldn’t use.

A (mostly) state-educated girl from Sussex, May — like Merkel — is the daughter of a clergyman (May’s father died in a car crash in her 20s). If she wins the leadership, she is charged with bringing unity and, like “Mutti” Merkel, she’s expected to be a mother-of-the-nation figure, having previously fought to end the Tory reputation as the “nasty party”.

Like Merkel, May is a pragmatist. She said on Desert Island Discs of her political leanings that she is neither Thatcherite nor Cameronite (“I don’t have an -ism but I do believe in certain principles”) and that her attitude to her Type I diabetes, which requires her to inject insulin four times a day, was “just get on and do it”.

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Neither is without controversy: Merkel has provoked fury for taking in thousands of refugees, while May’s Home Office policies regularly attract Change.org petitions in protest. They have both also been criticised as too cautious, with May deliberating extensively over policy changes. May is also switching one poisoned chalice, the Home Office (where she has failed to meet Tory immigration targets) for a tilt at another: handling Brexit, and the Kafka’s castle of complications that entails.

There’s a chance that the Tories will have had two female leaders before Labour has managed one . But perhaps May will end up facing another woman across the dispatch box: Angela Eagle. She would be the first elected female Labour leader; Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett were interim leaders. Eagle would, however, claim a different first for Labour: an openly gay leader of a main political party in Westminster. She and Maria Eagle were also the first twin sisters ever to sit on the government front bench.

Though Eagle may be politically miles apart from Merkel and May, she’s not so wildly different in manner. Her caution is evident in the fact she reportedly has 51 Labour MPs backing her, is ready to stand but wants Corbyn to go rather than mounting a challenge.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking at a news conference in Berlin
REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

The daughter of a seamstress mother and printworker father, Eagle was state-educated (though she is part of the PPE set). She has the kind of excellent brain (she’s a chess champion) that crisis calls for, and is a gifted orator: her impressively sharp tongue has been evident at PMQs when filling in for Corbyn. She has worked her way up, serving under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and is seen as a unifying candidate (at least in the parliamentary party, though perhaps not among the membership). A party loyalist, back in February she told the Observer: “The Labour Party is more important than any personality.”

Merkel, May and Eagle all seem “palatable” in a world that is still short of female power, as Clinton’s slow road towards the White House shows. Our politics have not yet spawned a female Boris, although buffalo-riding, photo- op-chasing Ruth Davidson shows signs of breaking the mould.

This quartet are also determined to bring other women with them. “Angela is a huge supporter of young women,” says Tulip Siddiq, MP for Hampstead and Kilburn. “She mentored me for years and encouraged me to pursue a political career.” I have also sat on a panel with May — the proud owner of a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt — where she spoke eloquently about the need to ensure girls are not held back by their sex. Merkel (having shied away from calling herself a feminist) suddenly put female empowerment at the heart of her work last year. And Clinton — in contrast to 2008 — has put the gender agenda at the centre of her 2016 campaign.

When Bill became President, Clinton said: “I suppose I could have stayed at home and baked cookies... but what I decided to do was fulfil my profession.” That statement provoked an outcry. It was ahead of its time.

For the rise of this quartet is part of a new feminist revolution: older women claiming power. At 55, Eagle is a relative whippersnapper. May is 59, Merkel 61. And Clinton will be 69 by results day. The chronology of being a woman is changing: the best years lie ahead.

Follow Rosamund Urwin: @rosamundurwin

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