The strongest female voice in politics is gone. Will there ever be another?

As someone who was born after Margaret Thatcher stepped down from office, the Iron Lady has been a remarkably present figure throughout my life. Perhaps it was because she was the local MP for my area before taking up residence at Downing Street, or the fact she was admired by one parent whilst despised by the other. But more than that, more than any policy she ever triumphed or failed with, the inimitable Mrs T did something that had never happened before or since: she proved that politics could be a woman’s game.

Thatcher’s politics might leave me cold, but her conviction does anything but. As I sat in the newsroom at lunchtime today, watching interview after interview with Tory peers, and the ex-PM’s former colleagues, that achievement was yet again hammered home. I watched as a conveyor belt of wrinkled old Etonians were asked to comment on Thatcher, on her policies, and her life, and her input, and couldn’t help but wonder where her female contemporaries might be. Surely it was for them, and not her male counterparts, that a woman at the forefront of British politics truly meant something.

I talk about the lack of women in male dominated areas of life somewhat frequently – in fact, I often think I should write about something else. But then I notice an all-male panel show, or a political conference entirely devoid of female journalists, and can’t help but put pen back to paper. In a government with woefully few female politicians, most of whom are forgettable faces drawn in to keep up the appearance of addressing the gender gap, Thatcher’s rise to the top of her game and ability to stay there for over a decade is all the more meaningful.

While I found many of her policies to be rather deplorable, Thatcher’s belief in politics, and belief in herself, do offer a glimmer of retribution.  A politician who can be respected is something I’m yet to see. I have never heard the current state of politics more accurately summed up than by comedian Zoe Lyons, who two years ago proffered: “We now have the blandest politicians in Europe. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband – if there was a General Election tomorrow, I wouldn’t know which middle class, middle aged, bland suited, wet lipped, big foreheaded Oxford graduate to punch in the face first.”

British politics has become an increasingly sorry state of affairs, where so-called ‘leaders’ are little more than media monkeys spouting watered down policies that have no real meaning. It is bitterly ironic that in their desperation to show themselves as characters, as men of the people, that Camereggiband has become little more than political white noise. Thatcher didn’t need to tweet, or draft in house pets in a desperate bid for attention. She cared about her country, and though the way she showed this was wildly divisive, no one can doubt her genuine desire to make a difference.

When Roger Ebert passed away last week, tributes poured out in memory of the great writer who spent much of his career destroying that of others with an acerbic flick of his pen. But praise and adulation were heaped upon him because, whether what he said was good or bad, he had an innate understanding of his craft. You may have disagreed with a review or two, but nobody could say the man couldn’t write.

And similarly, while Thatcher’s policies directly impacted some in a most terrible fashion, she understood the game she was playing. It is easy to look back retrospectively and insist that there were better ways to bring coal mining to an end, but the reality was that there was a job that needed doing, and she was the only one with the guts to pull the plug. A politician can never make everyone happy – that goes against the very nature of democracy, where there will always be a majority and minority – but one whose legacy remains as prominent as Thatcher’s has and will speaks volumes for what she achieved. The vast majority of politics revolves around papering over the cracks left by the last government, and while she had inherited an economically damaged country in a perpetual state of rule by an overpaid boys club, adversity seemed to propel her forward.

What worries me most about Thatcher’s death is not the Bieber generation tweeting their desperate confusion about why someone’s name they don’t recognise is trending. What is far more concerning than that is how Britain’s only ever female leader being gone will impact the future of women in politics. I struggle to believe that the likes of Baroness Warsi or Nadine Dorries will positively influence young girls contemplating a career in politics – there are simply no role models, no female tour-de-force frontbenchers who show girls that they can be a party minority and win.

I find it almost impossible to get my head around the fact that out of 75 Prime Ministers, in a country where 51 per cent of the population is female, we have been outnumbered by male leaders in 98.7 per cent of British history. And now, in a society that is supposedly gender equal, we cannot produce one female politician prepared to run for the top spot – which makes Thatcher’s victory at a time where women’s place was in the kitchen all the more significant.

Review: POSH ****

In a week where leaders of one of the world’s biggest banks have been forced to resign, a play about scapegoating individuals to salvage the reputation of the group seems particularly timely. Indeed, while playwright Laura Wade’s Riot Club may be a spin on the heady days of Bullingdon, the debauched characters and religiously upheld belief that money makes the world go round still retain cultural relevance two years after its debut.

The Conservative party, if not the entire right wing of Britain, are clear targets for attack in POSH: here a microcosmic world in which wreaking havoc and female subjugation are not only encouraged, but enforced. Having undergone something of a rewrite since the original, the play seeks to make an example of the Bullingdon Club and those now at the helm of this country, namely David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson, all of whom were members of the elitist institution. Art imitates life as Alistair Ryle (Leo Bill)’s abhorrent drunken antics secure him a place on the parliamentary ladder.

POSH is certainly a show of two halves, and the joviality and frequent bursts of a cappella in the first undeniably lull the audience into a false sense of security. But towards the interval, it appears all is not well as Ryle lambasts the lower classes with unfettered vitriol, apparently sickened by their sense of entitlement. By the time the curtain goes down, no one is laughing anymore.

The second act continues much in this same fashion: gone are the jokes and the japes, and in their place an extended  tirade against the  social groups who steal a pair of trainers and label the act a form of protest. ‘Dr Dolittle could talk to animals, that didn’t mean he wanted to be mates with them,’ they whine, attempting to rationalise their contempt for those of lesser lineage. Things go too far, however, when their anger incites them to beat the restaurant’s proprietor to death after he returns to the dining room to find it has been defaced. For the good of the club, and for the good of each other, allegedly, one must take the fall for the Riot Club and take sole responsibility. It is pertinent that club president James Leyton-Masters laughs, ‘this isn’t a democracy’ in the first half, and yet when it comes to saving their skins at the expense of a ‘friend’, the majority rules.

What can at first be laughed off as the idiosyncrasies of Tory posh boys quickly becomes a contemptible satire of those currently in power, and how corrupt beginnings can only lead to similar ends. Wade’s Riot Club go to show that it’s a rich man’s world, and anyone who begs to differ is expendable.

A Carr-less Mistake

This week, an investigation by The Times uncovered that comedian Jimmy Carr had been sheltering £3.3m per year from the tax man by using the controversial offshore K2 scheme. Instead of paying 50% of his earnings over £150,000, Carr has been paying just 1% through a tax avoidance system that is, worryingly, entirely legal. Much debate has ensued over whether it is the fault of the government for allowing such loopholes to exist, or Carr’s for having the audacity to pocket the overwhelming majority of his millions. One thing that is for sure, though, is that while his reputation has been mildly tarnished, the entire debacle has largely served to boost Carr’s profile and give him more funny fodder for his stand-up shows.

Like many others, I watched Friday night’s 8 Out of 10 Cats purely to see how Carr would react to the inevitable jibes launched at him. Having apologised on Twitter for his ‘terrible error of judgement’ and promising to ‘conduct [his] financial affairs much more responsibly’, many seemed satisfied that he’d done wrong, been found out and pledged to stop being a naughty, tax dodging boy. But while the apology seemed reasonable enough, I was less convinced by the assumed air of self-deprecation he displayed on the show. I understand, of course, that he has been backed into such a corner that whatever his next move was, it would seem inauthentic, but his regular appeals of ‘yeah it’s all my fault, guys, I’m a terrible person’ did little to convince me he was actually sorry. Sorry his cover-up has been exposed, certainly, but actually sorry for what he’s done? I’m not so sure.

The thing is, the papers are regularly littered with tales of benefit cheats scrounging an extra £50 per week from the government purely because they are too lazy to get jobs. But my vehement disapproval of anyone who tries to squeeze the system for more than they are owed is far outweighed by my feelings towards the behaviour of those select few millionaires who deem themselves exempt from the taxation system. The amount that benefit scroungers accrue is so pitifully minimal in comparison to the likes of what Carr and his tax dodging cronies get away with that the finger pointing hand of the media seems, with the exception of this incident, to be exposing the wrong people entirely.

When asked why he got involved with the Jersey based K2 scheme in the first place, Carr replied that he ‘never really thought about it.’ Now this is something I find a little hard to believe. Ignoring the fact that Carr is a Cambridge educated man, the fact any forty year old with a shred of common sense would enter into something so patently immoral and unjust without thinking the consequences through seems wildly unlikely. Add to this that Carr is one of the country’s most famous comedians, and being found out would undoubtedly cause a mini scandal, and the whole thing becomes even more implausible. Maybe he really did get involve with K2 without a second thought. Or maybe he’s a dirty liar. I guess we’ll have to wait for his next autobiography to find out.

Indeed, the most galling part of the situation has to be that Carr is set to make even more money from his money making scheme by making jokes about his money making scheme. Realising this, a remorseful (or even socially savvy) person might offer to donate a large proportion of the money he has sheltered to charity, but the comedian has thus far abstained from doing so, reaffirming my opinion that any upset he feels will be the result of being found out, not of the immorality of his actions. While I agree that such loopholes should not exist at all, the fact people actively decide to exploit these corrupt opportunities not only makes a mockery of Cameron’s elusive Big Society but shows a rather unpleasant side to the people we revere at the highest level of the social order – celebrities. It seems to me that entering the K2 scheme is kind of like stealing that bag of sweets from Woolworths as a child: we all knew we could probably do it without getting caught, but decided against it because it was just plain wrong. For Carr, however, that £3.3m bag of sweets clearly proved just too tempting.

The House of Commons is anything but calm, dear

Michael Winner has done a lot of things in his time, but causing a ‘sexist’ slur in the Commons is certainly a new one. His enduring catchphrase “Calm down, dear” was used by the Prime Minister yesterday to quell peals of protestation from Angela Eagle: Labour MP, woman and lesbian. I wonder which one Cameron finds most offensive.

Unsurprisingly, the debacle has inspired a wealth of angry feminist comments lamenting the supposedly backward and sexist state of our government. What seems to be the most embarrassing part of this situation is not this alleged misogyny, but rather Cameron’s apparent desperation to seem amusing and witty to his peers. There is a time and a place for making jokes at the expense of others, but Prime Minister’s Questions is probably neither.

I do not deny that the comment was inappropriate and patronising to say the least, but to label it sexist seems to be distorting it hugely. Cameron most likely made the remark to seem like an approachable man of the people, the thing he is most maligned for being the antithesis of. I am almost certain that more people in this country could disdainfully list where he has been educated rather than any of his actual policies.

Our government certainly need mass appeal, but the pressure they are under to perform like media monkeys is slowly getting out of control. We should elect people to run this country because we think they can do a good job of it, and not because they appear to be particularly entertaining on an episode of Loose Women. If anything, Clegg’s competence during the Prime Ministerial Debates last year and subsequent crumbling of all his promises serve to show that what we see on screen does not necessarily correlate to one’s ability to be a successful politician.

Something particularly perturbing in the reportage of this incident was one commentator’s jibe that Cameron’s former Bullingdon Club membership was to blame for his condescension towards women. Renowned for over 200 years of raucous debauchery, it is probably true that in their hey-day, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and George Osborne got up to more than their fair share of no good. What is unfair to assume, however, is that just because they were affiliated with the elite institution during their time as students, they are automatically guilty of sexism. When Cameron described his favourite joke as “Nick Clegg” before the forming of the coalition, no one accused him of degrading men as a sex, and the same should be true in this case. Innocuous comments made against individuals should not be interpreted as an attitude towards an entire group.

Britain also seems to have a never-ending sour taste in its mouth regarding politicians’ behaviour: whether it’s claiming Kit-Kats on expenses or refusing to reveal their favourite biscuit, they can do no right in the eyes of the public. Whilst MPs do need to be kept in check, many other European countries are a lot worse off with their leaders than we are here. With Sarkozy calling rioting immigrants in France ‘scum’  and Berlusconi sleeping with half the population of Italy, I’d say we’re getting off pretty lightly.

I am certainly pro-female rights, but what I cannot understand is women making themselves the victims in situations where this is simply not the case. A misjudged quip said in the heat of the moment doesn’t seem to call for the chargrilling of brassieres just yet. We all try to be funny now and then, and it seems as though, not for the first time, the Prime Minister’s timing was just a little off.