Jayne Dowle: A leader who can get us through a '˜disaster movie'

What kind of Prime Minister is Theresa May turning out to be? This question seems to be perplexing everyone, from newspaper interviewers more interested in her recipe for scones than her political beliefs, to Piers Morgan, who is clearly pathetically fixated on her shoes.
Theresa May greets her audience at the Tory Party conference on Wednesday. (PA).Theresa May greets her audience at the Tory Party conference on Wednesday. (PA).
Theresa May greets her audience at the Tory Party conference on Wednesday. (PA).

Personally, Mrs May reminds me of a disaster movie. In a good way. You know the kind I mean. Great Britain has been visited by some massive trauma. A failed military coup perhaps, or attack by alien life forms. The country is reeling, rudderless and isolated from the rest of the world.

All members of the previous government have met their ends in a gory and untimely fashion. And in their place, a woman has been chosen to lead the country through difficult days. This woman is as neutral as it is possible to be. She is focused on the job. She is not vainglorious and does not openly court attention. She is assisted by a cohort of mysterious quiet men – no one knows all their names – and some other briskly efficient women. Sometimes life has a funny way of imitating art.

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Whether you agree with me or not, you’ve got to concur that all the established political comparisons are failing to come up with anything worth knowing.

In essence, Mrs May is the outcome of a system which has clearly lost its way. We need to stop finding redundant and out-dated measurements and start looking at her for what she is.

In this, we might stop trying to search for evidence of “human” qualities. That nonsense about the scones, for example. Would Boris Johnson, had he made it to Number 10, have been asked for his favourite recipe for cupcakes? I doubt it very much. It is clear that Mrs May is a woman. Do we really need to find proof that her extra-curricular activities reinforce the stereotypical mould?

I’m not being militantly feminist here. Quite the opposite. I’m trying to look beyond the fact that Mrs May wears a skirt sometimes and see her for what she is: the Prime Minister of the country. Why, in the 21st century, do we need to persist in pigeon-holing public figures purely on the basis of their sex?

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It’s fear of the unknown of course. For years we agonised over whether we would ever have a female Prime Minister again. And now we’ve got one, we’re not sure what to make of her. More than two decades after Baroness Thatcher was ousted from power, are we really still so scared of a woman in charge that we have to soften her by turning her into a sharp-suited version of Mary Berry?

It’s ridiculous. It’s also patronising. Can you believe that Piers Morgan actually uttered the words “girl-power triumvirate”, when he suggested that Mrs May might lead the Western world with Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton?

I’m not even paying much regard to the political allegiance she technically represents. All I care about, right now, is that she is not some over-inflated Tory boy with only his own interests at heart, nor a rabid Socialist who would seek to drag the country back into the political Dark Ages. I just want a safe pair of hands. It’s that disaster movie aftermath thing again.

As she closed the Conservative Party Conference, Mrs May called on Tories to “embrace a new centre ground... built on the values of fairness and opportunity”. If David Cameron had said this, I would have sniffed more than a whiff of opportunism. She also says she wants to use the power of government to help “ordinary working-class people”. She has some work to do here on establishing who exactly these people might be in our complex modern society, but there is a sincerity which is refreshing.

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If you listen, you’ll find Mrs May speaks a lot about power and the abuse thereof. When she’s asked a decent question, she’s given chance to show her true colours. On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she was asked, “what makes you angry?” Her answer: “Injustice. Child sexual abuse. Modern slavery. When you see the powerful abuse their position.”

What she does represent is a new staunchness in politics. The problem is, while she is quietly getting on with restoring order to Cabinet government, tackling thorny issues such as grammar schools and the NHS, and taking the time to consider all issues related to our exit from the European Union, the silly media circus is still playing catch-up.

By imposing the values of shallow “celebrity” upon a serious-minded woman, they show themselves up for what they are. The danger is, politics abhors a vacuum. As the Labour Party has engaged itself in self-annihilation, this facile branch of the media has turned itself into a kind of unofficial Opposition.

If you still insist on a soundbite to sum her up, I’ll give you one. The source is Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” No mention of shoes, scones or socking it to the world with Mrs Merkel.