CONFESSIONS OF A BREXIT TELLY WATCHER..... Adèle Geras

This post is going to be a bit different from my usual  kind. It's somewhat of a confession. It will be light on photographs because I haven't the energy to go fossicking among Wikipedia Commons to find pictures of the protagonists, so I'm going to assume you all know what each of my cast of fascinating characters looks like. They've been in  front of the nation for months now and you will each have your own image of every single one. 

I'm going to confess two things. The first is my complete fascination with the coverage of the Brexit crisis. The second is my obsession with the necklaces of our Prime Minister, a subject I can't bring up much on Twitter for two reasons. The first reason: I have vowed to shut up on on Social Media about politics. Any political opinion gets you abused, trolled, and insulted, so I try to keep firmly silent.  And if I were to write about the PM's jewellery, I might be accused of being trivial, or writing about Mrs May as a woman. Heaven forfend! For the purposes of this piece, all you need to know is: I was and remain a Remainer. That's it. Anyone who thinks I'm going to yell and scream about Brexit has another think coming. The actual leaving of the European Union is not my concern here. Rather it's how I've reacted to total immersion in the coverage of the last few months in Parliament. I will say it here: I am hooked. A total Brexit news junkie. I watch everything I can: the news and Newsnight of course but also Politics Live every single day and it's on a series link on my telly so that I can catch up with the programme if I happen to be out when it airs at 12.15. on BBC2. For those of you who don't know it, it's 45 minutes of six people talking, under the guidance of the excellent Jo Coburn. She has a good mix of people on the show: men and women, Labour, Tory and every other party, young and old and you often get a visit (especially on Wednesdays, when the programme takes in Prime Minister's Questions) from the redoubtable and always impeccably-dressed Laura Kuenssberg.

Here is my Brexit blanket. It's perfect tv knitting and it's growing apace. 

Okay, Brexit. What I really love about it and especially in the last couple of  months since we didn't leave on March 29th, is the drama. And the dramatis personae. For a drama is what it really is. There's the wonderful setting of the House of Commons leaking already and in danger of falling down altogether if measures aren't taken, but meanwhile both picturesque and historic. Then there's a very huge and important Ticking Clock. Any writer will tell you that such a thing is an enormous help in making everything more tense and exciting. And you have a dream cast! What an array, what a veritable gallimaufry of people is ranged in front of us! There's something for every taste: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Ken Clarke, Michael Gove, Boris-who-doesn't-need-a-surname (which may become important in any General Election) Keir Starmer with his intriguing hairstyle, and of course the Leader of the Opposition about whom I will say nothing. In charge of the Government for good or ill is Theresa May, who came into office after the Referendum result produced another drama ( see Boris and Michael Gove, above.)

We also have another cast in Europe: Michel Barnier, Donald Tusk, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron (who comes decked in Napoleonic trappings and has an Older Wife...the stuff of soap operas). They are fascinating in themselves. I like listening to Laura K and Katia Adler when Mrs May goes to Brussels or Strasbourg, because they paint a picture of our Prime Minister being..well, not exactly welcomed and you can understand why. We are, after all, trying to leave. (But in parentheses, I loved the video clip of Merkel and May exclaiming over an iPhone at the coincidence of both wearing a royal blue suit on the same day.)


Now look at our heroine: here's a 62 year old woman. She's diabetic. She has to get up every single day and put on decent clothes and an iconic necklace, and stand in front of more than 600 people who are constantly at her for not doing this, not doing that, not listening to them, listening too much to the others, especially the DUP under Arlene Foster. who seem not much given to gentle, emollient chat. Mrs May is not particularly liked. She's not clubbable. She doesn't have the gift of the gab. She's wooden in interviews. She's called the Maybot. The ERG group in her own Party would like to see her gone. They failed in a coup attempt...that was dramatic. I was glued to the sofa for all that, you may be sure. But her Weeble-like gift for getting up again when knocked down is amazing. 

There are others who think they'd make a better fist of it if they were Leader...but not a single one of them wants their fingerprints on a Bad Deal and to be left holding the Brexit Baby. Also, very importantly, no one has a PLAN to put up against Mrs May's Deal. Not one single idea put forward has the solid support of Parliament behind it. And, like it or not, the UK voted to Leave. This is the background to every single drama: we voted to Leave. I was desperately sorry that we did and sincerely wish we hadn't, but I fail to see how overturning a democratic vote by another Referendum would be the answer....oops. Sorry. A bit of politics there. Back to Mrs May and her necklaces.

Here's another confession. I adore jewellery and can talk about it for hours with anyone interested. When Mrs May first took office, my immediate thought was: hurray! Something new to look at every day. And she's done me proud. Her necklaces are brilliant. I like some more than others. The metal chains and complicated silver affairs are terrific. Best of all, I love her green glass beads, which are I think, faceted glass. She has a similar ruby-looking one, and sometimes she wears gobstopper pearls. And a couple that look like those models of atoms: globes clustering together that you find in science labs. I'm keen on her Jackie Brazil flagstones number. Mrs May wears good bracelets too. There's one which bears an image of Frida Kahlo. Often her chain necklace has a matching bracelet...I could go on.

She's got the knack (rare) of knowing where a necklace should sit on your chest. Nothing dangles. Nothing chokes. Every piece falls in exactly the right place.
She has the advantage of height but also the tall woman's stoop, as if she's trying to disguise it. 
Her shoes are legendary. She has good legs. Not every one of her outfits works, but she has a better strike rate than many other public figures. I did get a little tired of the famous pale blue coat....but I live in hope that the warmer weather will see the back of that.

Look closely and you'll see my Brexit blanket has grown...but now we're in unknown territory. At the time of writing, we have an extension till October. But will we leave in time to avoid the dreaded European elections? Will a Tory-Labour agreement about something be reached? Will the group that's prevented us from leaving agree to get May's deal through Parliament? Will there be a vote of confidence? Will the Government fall? Will Theresa May survive for more than a month or two? She has shown remarkable stickability. See "no one else has a plan" above.


I'm writing this during the Parliamentary recess in April. Who knows what will have happened by the time this post goes live? May have to add a ps or maybe not. In any case, I'm longing for the break to be over so that the drama can begin again. This is a kind of interval and I want to be back on the sofa with Laura K, Katia A and Andrew Neil who does the best interviews of all and lets no one at all off any hook. I want the performances to resume in the Mother of Parliaments. The cast of characters is always full of surprises. There will be alarms and excursions. Social Media is helping meanwhile..but the Drama goes on and this particular one has that priceless thing: not a single person knows what's going to happen in the end...back to the sofa to see if there's a Final Twist!

Mary Beard's "Women & Power: A Manifesto" by Janie Hampton

Professor Mary Beard, © Caterina Turroni

Professor Mary Beard is Britain’s most famous classicist and The History Girl’s History Girl. Her book Women and Power: A Manifesto is a reminder of  the progress, or lack of, that women have achieved in the last hundred years.
This highly readable book of 100 short pages is based on two lectures Mary Beard gave for the London Review of Books at the British Museum in 2007 and 2014. She uses classical examples to remind us of the deep strata of ugly gender prejudice that underlie what women are still up against. “This is not,” Beard insists, “the peculiar ideology of some distant culture, however distant in time it may be.”

Telemachus tells his mother Penelope to keep on weaving, Athenian pot, 500 BC

She takes the story right back to the first known account of misogyny: Homer’s Odyssey, composed almost 3000 years ago. Telemachus, the teenage son of Odysseus, ordered his middle-aged mother Penelope to be quiet and go back upstairs to her weaving, and leave the men to get on with the important job of talking to each other. Haven't we all been there? I am old enough to have been to dinner parties where after the cheese course, the women withdrew to the drawing room to chat about childcare and recipes, leaving the men to drink port, smoke cigars and discuss world affairs (or so we assumed). My innocent husband once tried to join us women, but was physically barred from leaving the dining room by our host! Telemachus was learning the art of being a real man, which included telling women to be quiet. How many women readers of The History Girls have sat on committees, and either not been allowed to speak or had their bright idea taken up by, and credited to, a man?
Beard explores with wry wit and accessible language, the early history of misogyny and how it has been reinforced ever since Western “civilization” began. She gives the stories of three women who spoke up in the Roman forum. Unfortunately, according to the male Roman writing about her, Maesia "really had a man’s nature"; and as for Afrania, her speech was “yapping and barking”. Her demise in 48 BC was recorded, only because "with unnatural freaks like this" it was more important to record her death than her birth. The third woman, Hortensia, was only permitted to speak for other women, and not on behalf of men too. There are echoes here of modern governments that have Ministries of Women. “Look,” say the ruling men. “We have a Ministry for Women. We can’t possibly be misogynists." Like the dinner parties, the women are encouraged to knit and cook, leaving the men to govern the important things like the economy and war.
Demeaning language about ‘yapping’ women also continues today. In 2017, a Times headline screamed “Women prepared for Power Grab of London in Church, Police and BBC.” While men are awarded positions of power and authority, women have to grab them, pushing aside those unfortunate, less qualified men who previously gained the work or positions.
Little has changed in two thousand years. The image of Donald Trump as the Greek god Perseus holding aloft the decapitated head of Hillary Clinton as Medusa, was an unpleasant and graphic warning during the 2016 U.S. election campaign of how Trump would rule as president.

Donald Trump as Perseus with the head of Medusa depicted as Hillary Clinton, 2016.

Beard’s saddest observation is that women are their own worst enemies. Women often condone and reinforce misogyny, and behave and present themselves as "almost men." In 1588, Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have encouraged her troops who were about to face the Spanish Armada, with the words, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” In other words, “Forget I’m a woman, I’m as good as a man.” She knew that only by ignoring her sex could she hang onto her power: with marriage and babies she would lose it. 

Elizabeth I rousing her troops at Tilbury, 1588.
She seems to be giving  'two fingers' to the Spanish.

Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May both reached their positions of high power by emulating men’s deep voices and long strides. Neither woman has behaved, at least in public, in a feminist or friendly way to other women, although they have both cleverly made use of a symbol of womanhood to reinforce their positions: Thatcher’s hand-bag became a weapon and May’s uses her kitten-heeled shoes to mollify. Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel both wear trouser suits, presumably to ‘blend in’ with the men. “Having women pretend to be men may be a quick fix, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem,” writes Beard.
Even though Mary Beard has broken through many of the barriers preventing women from achieving their potential, she still suffers abuse just for being herself. Without appealing for sympathy, she reflects on how she has been treated in both print and social media. She has not been judged on her skills or intelligence, but on what she looks like. The late food critic A.A. Gill commented not on the content of her television programmes but on her teeth, hair and clothes; and judged her to be "too ugly for television". Although undoubtedly hurt, (even tough, hard-working women have feelings) she fought back against "the blokeish culture that loves to decry clever women" and hoped to show young women that there was more than one way of being a woman, and of growing older.
Despite gratuitously rude men like Gill, Beard is both respected by her academic peers and admired by television viewers for her authenticity. In 2013, I saw her presented with “The Oldie Pin-up of the Year Award” at the smart London restaurant “Simpson's in the Strand”. In a forthright and witty speech to the male-dominated audience, she made no concessions. She was probably the only woman present not wearing lipstick, and certainly the only one in a comfortable grey cardigan.
Beard considers how the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded, and how the views of male ancient Greeks are still repeated, in order to make gender violence seem normal. As Jacqueline Rose wrote in The Guardian, Beard describes “the poison of patriarchy as it drips into the body politic of what parades under the banner of civilisation.”
All round the world there are women who dare not speak at all, even when raped. Let’s hope that the news of sexual harassment from Hollywood and Westminster will not become tomorrow’s chip-wrappers. Those who support the ‘witch-hunt’ hypothesis certainly hope so. Beard notes that sexual predation is about power, and it is the men who usually have that; if they happen to be film producers or politicians, even more so.
Beard makes a plea that women should be allowed to make mistakes, and then pick themselves up without being pilloried. “If I was starting this book again from scratch,” she writes, “I would find more space to defend women’s right to be wrong.”
The conclusion that Beard comes to is a surprise. Women must stop trying to gain equal power because power itself is designed by men, and not what we really want or need. Society will only improve when power is redefined. "We don’t have a model or a template for what a powerful woman looks like,” she writes. “We only have templates that make them men." This brilliant and readable book will hopefully make us all wonder how can we help men to achieve equality for women. And ask, what would a world with articulate women allowed to speak look like? Would there be less violence? No rape, no guns? More equality?
Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard published by Profile (£7.99).
PS I have noted the irony that I have used Mary Beard’s father’s name – the patrilineal. Even journalists and academics model themselves against men!