Theresa May is set to become the UK’s next prime minister after Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the contest to become Conservative Party leader.
The timing of the handover of power from David Cameron looks set to be after PM’s questions on Wednesday.
Mrs Leadsom, who campaigned to leave the EU, said the UK needed ‘strong and stable government’ and that Mrs May was ‘ideally placed’ to implement Brexit.
(BBC, July 11, 2016)
I hasten to clarify that I hail her as an iron lady not because she’s another woman, but because she possesses all of the no-nonsense traits that made Margaret Thatcher such a formidable leader. Except that, given the political minefields she navigated to arrive at this position, she might be made of steelier stuff; hence, the steel lady?
Of course, Thatcher was a little too heartless for my bleeding heart. Therefore, I hope May does not feel that showing strength requires her to suppress natural empathy with the weak and downtrodden….
In any event, her rise provides further vindication of my abiding belief that the world would be a much better place if more women than men were heads of state. Indeed, I’m on record writing, only a little in jest, that “Men Should Be Barred from Politics,” September 25, 2013. But I’ve been championing this cause for years — as the following attests:
In light of the recent trend set by Angela Merkel of Germany and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, Bachelet’s election would be encouraging to those of us who welcome the seepage of womanpower through the crevices of political and corporate governance around the world…
Here’s to ‘the fairer sex’ – not only as indispensable guardians of home and hearth, but also as invaluable (and capable) stewards of the ship of state!
(“Cracking the Glass Ceiling: First Woman to Become President in South America,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 12, 2005)
No doubt it’s noteworthy that the preternaturally chauvinistic city of Rome elected Virginia Raggi its first female mayor just last month.
But nothing would tip the velvet in this respect quite like the United States electing Hillary Clinton its first female president this November.
So here’s to the fairer sex (i.e., the more fair-minded). “You’ve come a long way, baby,” is slowly but surely becoming a reality.
Related commentaries:
UK post Brexit…
Men should be barred…
Glass ceiling…