“A triumph of hope over experience”, was a quip first used by Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century lexicographer, on hearing that a friend intended to remarry. It rings true in an election year where experience provides little to celebrate, yet politicians still try to convince us to plight our troth to their party by claiming things will be better next time.
Some voters hoped against experience that Rishi Sunak’s leadership would be a move away from the polarising politics of recent years and towards the issues that exercise everyone. After all, there’s plenty of scope. NHS waiting lists number almost eight million and social care is in crisis. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 29 per cent of children live in poverty, while the Environment Agency confesses that only fourteen per cent of rivers are healthy. That’s before we get down to the fragile state of business: according to the British Chamber of Commerce, covid, Brexit and inflation have left the economy “stuck in first gear”.
Any hopes of a return to reason, however, were obliterated in February when Sunak clasped Piers Morgan’s hand to accept a £1,000 bet over refugees being transported to Rwanda. In the same situation, one withering look from Margaret Thatcher would have had Morgan squirming like a 1970s schoolboy caught peddling smut behind the bike shed. Theresa May lacked her predecessor’s inner Boudicca but would have mustered enough disdain to turn the broadcaster’s smirk into a wasp-swallowing impression worthy of Britain’s Got Talent.
This being our annual Women’s Issue, it’s tempting to speculate that no female leader would ever descend to Morgan’s level. But the very next day, Liz Truss launched a tirade against minority-sympathising communists masquerading as environmentalists, to explain what’s broken about Britain: apparently that’s the entire manifesto of the latest Tory splinter faction, the “Pop Cons”. Now there’s a label that says with onomatopoeical precision exactly what it does on the tin.
To be fair, apart from Boris Johnson, who would probably have goaded Morgan into upping the stakes, it’s hard to imagine any other male prime minister falling for such crass gimmickry. It seems integrity is no longer the preserve of either sex, although it was once the yardstick of public life from the time of the ancient Greeks. Their definition of living a good life, eudaimonia, had nothing to do with topping up your tan on an island while sipping Assyrtiko, but was rather a principle of “human good” that Samuel Johnson would have understood when compiling his 1755 dictionary. In Crito, the 360BCE account of Socrates’ last days before execution, the philosopher equated goodness with acting “in a just manner”. Its author, Plato, along with Aristotle and the Stoics, agreed: the measure of good character is exemplified by our conduct towards others. Its corollaries are the kind of virtues sorely lacking by many of our current political elite: empathy, compassion, moderation, courage and wisdom.
The ancients also drew attention to the role of luck: it’s hard to contribute positively to society if you’re caught up in genocidal warfare or famine. Ministers of state, some themselves the daughters and sons of immigrants, who for their own political advantage label those desperate enough to cross the Channel in small boats as “criminals” and “invaders”, provide striking examples of a lack of recognition for their own good fortune.
Luck is of course a relative concept. It could be said that western women are “lucky” compared to those who live under regimes that deny them not only a vote but an education and other basic rights. Being an all-boy band, the ancients whose writings survive offer little informed guidance on the subject. Although, and we might say luckily, more recent times have provided the likes of Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt and Martha Nussbaum to balance the books. In The Fragility of Goodness, Nussbaum even adapted Plato’s Phaedrus for insights on the challenges facing working women.
Nonetheless, Thatcher’s example as a longstanding leader remains too much of an anomaly. We’re unlikely to have a woman PM again any time soon – although we might well have one as leader of the opposition, whatever the election outcome. Women still face discrimination at almost every level of society, including in the workplace. The government’s own data show that women are likely to enter the workforce better qualified than men, but earning less.
Thatcher would have had Morgan squirming like a ’70s schoolboy caught peddling smut
Many women still shy away from pressing their case, while most British men agree with equality in theory, but are squeamish about engaging with the issue, for fear of “getting it wrong”. The truth is that the greatest advancements in equality, from suffrage to workplace rights, have been achieved by women and men striving together, in collaboration. It’s an idea that’s gaining global acceptance: the UN’s 2030 Agenda includes “engagement of men and boys” in ensuring anti-discrimination measures are implemented.
Indeed, all the UK’s woes are just part of a wider global picture, our election just one of many important pivot-points facing the world this year. With the state of our environment, our economy and even our democracy at stake, we can’t afford to be caught up in a fractious battle between the sexes, or for feminism to be rent asunder by internecine warfare over gender. Put simply, all women and men of integrity need to act with eudaimonia if we’re to achieve social cohesion and genuine equity. Who knows, with such an approach, our loftiest hopes might even get the better of our expectations.
