Well! It hasn’t taken long for the commentariat to get over their excitement at the prospect of another female prime minster, has it? Can you imagine what the Guardian would be making of it were the contest between Angela and Maria Eagle, Venus and Serena Williams-style (or even, David and Ed Miliband-style)? It’d be triumph for feminism, a belated victory for the kind of positive discrimination gender politics which has proved so terrifically successful in the Labour party.
Well, it turns out that it’s not just a woman that feminists wants, it’s a particular kind of woman. Their kind of woman. No others need pretend to the gender.
The knives, in short are out for Andrea Leadsom. You can see as much in The Times interview with Rachel Sylvester in which she said that having children gave her a ‘very real stake’ in the next generation, as opposed to Theresa May, who ‘possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people’.
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