The BBC debate confirmed some unhelpful female stereotypes

If I were a nicer person, I suppose I’d have been rather more moved by what the Independent called the moment that summed up last night’s leaders debate, the ‘beautiful group hug’ by the three women leaders at the end while Ed Miliband looked on.  Rather, it summed up for me what I felt about the entire event, that it was a slightly embarrassing affair for women whose approach to politics is anything other than the sort of thing espoused by Greece’s radical left-wing party Syriza. If you take seriously the notion that the deficit is something to be addressed rather than put on hold, that the national debt is something to be talked about rather than an error of taste to be mentioned, well, the spectacle of the three women, Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood  – none of them English – more or less spitting out the word ‘austerity’ and brightening up at the mention of ‘immigration’ was not a happy one.