So I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have a female prime minister, a very clean-looking lady called Theresa May, and, good gosh, this is exciting. Because May is a wholly unique woman, of course, with her own achievements and ambitions and fascinating hairstyles. But at the same time, do you know who she’s exactly like? Margaret Thatcher.
I’m not the first person to have noticed. “The Tory Party may have found another Iron Lady in Theresa May,” the Daily Telegraph cried last week, and then made the shuddery sigh of the world’s longest-delayed orgasm. May’s speech outside No 10, about how she would fight inequality, was so extraordinary it prompted Sky’s Adam Boulton to say it “reminded me a bit of Thatcher”, and no surprise. After all, most politicians talk about how much they love inequality, so the only comparison Boulton could possibly reach for was Thatcher.
When Kenneth Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind were caught on camera doing their adorable Statler and Waldorf impression earlier this month, passing private critiques on various members of the Tory party, Clarke described May as “a bloody difficult woman, but you and I both worked for Margaret Thatcher!” He then (possibly) added, “And now, bring on the dancing frog!” The Telegraph took Clarke’s (non-frog) point seriously: “We have had [a bloody difficult woman] running the country before; we need another.” Then it took a long drag on a postcoital cigarette.
It is, admittedly, an inconvenient truth that there are many differences between May and Thatcher. For a start, May is far more experienced than Thatcher was when she assumed leadership, so the comparison is, despite the right wing’s drooling tone, actually something of a diss to May. May in fact dismissed Thatcher’s legacy as the reason behind the Conservative party’s reputation as “the nasty party”. Then there was Thatcher’s notorious tendency to not just pull up the ladder after her but thump on the head any woman who tried to scrabble on up. May, on the other hand, while not exactly the feminist dream realised, founded the initiative “Women2win”, which encourages the selection of more female MPs. She also named a woman as her home secretary, something Thatcher would have been about as likely to do as morph into a moose and run through Trafalgar Square with Leon Brittan on her back.
But no matter! Women are such rare creatures that they can only be understood through the prism of one another, like unicorns or sporting triumphs by the England football team. So if you don’t like Thatcher, don’t worry. You can just compare May to another female politician, and fortunately there are a few around these days (although that doesn’t stop them being treated like potentially dangerous exotic birds which need to be tamed by constant condescension). Several American and German newspapers have pish-tushed the Thatcher comparison, insisting instead that May is “the British Angela Merkel”. After all, as the German newspaper Bild pointed out, they have both worn “mint and turquoise outfits”. Well, that settles it.
Women are not just compared to each other, they must also be seen to fight with each other – because, the insinuation goes, there’s only one place for a woman at the table. May, it turns out, has been quarrelling with Thatcher for decades, proving death is no bar to a good catfight. It was claimed last week that May was “irritated” by Thatcher winning the leadership 30 years ago, because she wanted to be the first female PM. Fight, ladies, fight! And can you do it in that giant pit of Jell-O, please?
“But what about the men?” cry the men. “We get compared to each other, too!” Indeed you do, chaps. But you choose your comparisons yourselves: Bill Clinton’s knowing references to John F Kennedy, David Cameron overtly styling himself as the new Tony Blair at the start of his leadership. When other people are doing the comparing, there is a clear political connection, at the very least. Women, however, need only have the same genitals to be deemed identical.
Given how thoroughly male politicians have screwed up, you’d think people would be grateful that the women are now riding in to fix things, instead of trying to reduce them to lesser versions of established templates. It is one of those strange ironies that the more progress we make, the more determined the backlash: in this case, sexism by condescension, as a means of holding on to the past. We could have 10 female prime ministers in a row and the rightwing men would still be sitting there, like Edgar Allan Poe’s raven gone wrong, cawing, “Thatcher! Thatcher! Thatcher!”