Female leadership, leaning right
Edition 69
Happy Sunday,
Italy & Europe on my mind
How many of you had heard of Giorgia Meloni before this week? Or before Centrist technocrat Mario Draghi resigned as PM? Unless you are Italian or from the world of geopolitics, you probably hadn’t!! Here is a brief introduction to the woman who heads Brothers of Italy Party (Fdl). Will this right-wing fascist party leader be Italy’s first female PM? And should we all be worried? The answer simply, is yes!
Giorgia has managed to create a force to reckon with, by bringing all of Italy’s right-wing parties together. Not an easy task when you see the men she is leading - Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi and the like! Under her, we may now see the most right-wing Italian government since the second world war. This week she told the La Stampa newspaper, that is nothing to fear - claiming Italian left-wing think tanks were trying to scare the markets to secure a victory for the left.
To understand what she stands for, The New Statesman explains it rather well.
“To understand what she stands for, it helps to know that her party has a very unpleasant history that she has energetically sought to sanitise. FdI was formed in 2012 but has its roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which in turn was formed in 1946 by former acolytes of Benito Mussolini. Meloni, formerly president of the MSI’s youth wing, became leader of the FdI in 2014 and has tried to soften its image. Today it shares much of the far-right Lega’s Eurosceptic, anti-migrant, economically populist and socially authoritarian principles but adopts a somewhat more establishment style.”
A country that has had 66 governments since 1945, may now elect its first female Prime Minister and its 67th government in a snap election on 25 September 2022.
And Meloni isn’t alone. Europe’s suddenly seeing a resurgence of female political leaders. But they seem to share one thing in common - an ideology that definitively leans right. Why is that? European University Institute (EUI)’s Costanza Hermanin tried to explain the phenomenon earlier this year, after right-wing Maltese politician Roberta Metsola’s appointment as President of the European Parliament.
Would you like some tea?
Another female leader on the right of the political spectrum and at the cusp of becoming the U.K.’s third female PM (after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May) is Conservative Party favourite and former U.K. Foreign Secretary (aka Foreign Minister) Liz Truss.
She is going head-to-head with former U.K. chancellor Rishi Sunak for the top job and a pretty fugly apartment in No.10 Downing Street. This week after all other contenders were ousted in the Game of Thrones, I was hit by two observations talking to people in person and on social media.
1. Just how many older white men thought Liz Truss’s run for PM-ship of the U.K. was ‘super’, because she has an accountant husband who can explain and help her figure out the economy (!??). And how she truly represents the Conservative Party.
2. I was struck by how many liberal or minority elites thought billionaire hedge funder Rishi Sunak has a real chance at becoming the U.K.’s first PM of colour, because he ‘truly understands the economy’.
Both observations bely what we know.
We have one candidate who as Foreign Secretary made repeated geopolitical gaffes even a 5th grader would be mortified by. She maybe leading in polls and her chances of winning looking pretty good, but economists say her economic policies don’t make sense. So, we should all definitely be a tad suspect of Liz’s grasp of macro/microeconomics in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. In addition, her stance on refugees and immigration will leave the door open to potentially breaking international law, as will her views on other EU laws still applicable in the U.K. It does leave most of us wondering about U.K.’s inherent ability to follow international law under her.
The other candidate is calling himself the '“underdog” despite inhabiting a whole different fiscal plane to everyday people. As Chancellor, Rishi’s fiscal policies haven’t exactly been well thought out or solution seeking in the past few years. It also doesn’t help to fend off accusations of being a ‘Brutus’ that his campaign website was registered in 2021, when he was still waxing eloquent about his then-boss Boris Johnson’s amazing run as PM. Jumping on the refugee and immigration bandwagon to counter his opponent, this child of immigrants is now proposing floating prisons, refugee caps and deportation. He too brings up the question of whether the U.K. will comply with international law in the future.
But the ugliness of domestic U.K. politics isn’t why I’m writing about the two Tory party candidates. Neither would be in the running for premiership if the political situation wasn’t dire.
Why I am writing about them is because the Tory infighting for the top job seems to be theatrics when you contextualise it with this picture.
The Conservative party kingmakers, the 1922 committee saw absolutely no problem with this little photo-op this week. Well, they didn’t, until social media went ballistic on them.
The five men, including the 1922 committee chair, Sir Graham Brady, grinned broadly as the group posed - with joint vice-chair, Nusrat Ghani, serving them all tea as they announced the final two contenders (Liz & Rishi) at “teatime.”
The rather weak explanation to quell the uproar about the picture’s only woman of colour pouring tea for a bunch of old white men was - they were injecting a bit of levity to the leadership proceedings!
Based on this, your guess is as good as mine if the power behind the throne would vote a brown man (even if he is a billionaire) as their boss, over a white woman. You have to wonder, what does the Tory party really think of either minority? This jaded journo can’t wait to find out! But for now, everyday Brits are girding their loins for a messy, mud-slinging leadership contest, well aware that where we really are is between a rock and a hard place.
Some other great reads you might want to catch up on:
Issues that matter to us all:
ESG - three letters that have morphed into shorthand for hype and controversy. The Economist this week writes that it all really needs to boil down to emissions.
Heed the warnings of a global economic crisis from those in the know – and ignore those saying everything’s fine.
The WHO this weekend has declared Monkeypox as a global health emergency. Here is everything you need to know about getting tested, vaccines & treatment.
Nancy Pelosi is headed to Taiwan and will probably meet with President Tsai. China isn’t having any of it, warning Washington of a military response if the trip happens or the two women meet.
Sending you all great weekend vibes and hope you’re having a fabulous summer!
Maithreyi