Politicians who can’t take criticism should reconsider their choices

They resembled nothing so much as the contagion-driven crazies of the latest post-apocalyptic streaming drama The Last of Us, as they swarmed through the corridors on Capitol Hill. Closed-circuit television footage shows an 80-year-old woman protesting as she is hustled to safety: “Go back into session,” she pleads as the mob bays for heads.

“We have to finish the proceedings, or they will have a complete victory. We have to be able to maintain the sense ... that there is some security, that the government can function.”

As the roars, including women’s voices, closed in (“Bring her out, we’re coming in if you don’t bring her out”) she hunkered down, pushing every button that might elicit help – attorney general, vice-president (himself fleeing for his life) – until many hours, several deaths and hundreds of injuries later, the insurrection was broken by state police and a unit of the national guard. And finally, the US Congress regrouped and validated the result of the presidential election.

On January 6th, 2021, US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi showed how a leader behaves under extreme pressure. The resignations of Scottish first minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon because politics is “brutal” and New Zealand prime minister and Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern because her “tank is empty” have reinforced the continuing prejudice – incredible, given the careers of Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher - that women make weak leaders.

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The fact that many tributes concentrated on Ardern’s and Sturgeon’s brilliant Covid records adds a patronising twist: women leaders as political Florence Nightingales. The two resignations, though decidedly different, risk sending a signal to women that they are too weak and too feminine for political leadership.

But politics has always been about moral strength. And moral courage, like the empty tank, is not a gender issue. Which is a bitter irony for Sturgeon. When her scattergun of self pity and scorching the media abated, the clear light showed that in the matrix was a gender law over which she lost control.

“The longer any leader stays in the office, the more ‘polarised’ the debate becomes,” she said. Polarised debate is code for media hyperscrutiny. As always, blaming the messenger sought to displace the message. Put bluntly, Sturgeon found herself presiding over a system that controversially placed a recently convicted rapist, who self-identified as a woman, in a women’s prison.

Her problem here was that, having advocated for a law that made it easier for people to change their legal gender, she proved either unable or unwilling to defend it. The Bill was passed by the Scottish parliament but blocked from going for royal assent by the Scottish secretary in Westminster, who cited “safety issues for women and children”.

Sturgeon weaponised the Westminster veto, subverting it to her Scottish independence agenda. The Scottish secretary, she said, had behaved like a “governor general,” invoking a clearly colonial reference. Sturgeon must have been aware that trading in that kind of nationalist bellicosity would elicit the response, peculiar to the British tabloid press, of seeking her head on a plate.

The modus operandi of the British tabloid press, like Thomas Hobbes’s definition of life outside of society, is “nasty, brutish and short”. There is nothing new about that.

Their atavism when they scent fear or weakness is well known. Sturgeon’s reputation was as a communicator. But she failed the ultimate management test: for change to work, there must be communication and commitment.

Complaining about polarised debate reveals a desire, conscious or unconscious, to suppress it, which means suppressing free speech. The irony for politicians is that they share a fundamental pathology with their perceived persecutors in the political media. They have that most valued privilege of democracy, a voice. That brings huge responsibilities.

And if they can’t withstand the flip side of having a voice – ferocious criticism – they should reconsider their choices. Because nobody said it wouldn’t be tough.

This does not mean a woman leader cannot get sick, tired or burned out. Ardern’s “empty tank” felt very real; Sturgeon’s following so fast on it seemed disingenuous.

We live in an era where it is admirable to express feelings, but some jobs are exceptional. It does feminism no service if, every time a woman politician or woman journalist encounters criticism, they plead frailty or talk of the brutality of political life. Alas, sometimes admitting to weakness is just weakness.