The Reader: Gender shouldn’t be an issue for leadership

“High time Labour had a winning leader”. This should have been the headline of Emily Sheffield’s piece in your comment section on Friday, December 13.

To stipulate that the leader should be a woman was crass, illogical and prejudiced against men or transgender.

A leader must have certain qualities, irrespective of gender or gender identity, like vision, compassion and discernment to mention a few. All these can exist in any person. It is more to do with character and poise under pressure.

Winning is winning as Johnson has proved with Mayorship twice, Prime Minister once. Like him or hate him but he has won.

Namby-pamby logic and social constructionist tendencies that say it must be a woman shows an intellectual blindspot and loser mentality.
Ed Chat

Dear Ed

In 1992 there were just 50 female MPs and now there are 220, with 10 per cent of Parliament BAME MPs. If we apply your logic that it’s only ever about winning not representation, we’d still, as women, be being ruled over by white men making rules that suit them — history clearly demonstrates this.

Winning sometimes means changing the status quo. You may think wanting greater diversity in leadership roles is tokenism but fortunately for us since Nancy Astor became the first female MP to sit in the Commons and we got the vote a century ago, we haven’t spent much time listening to people like you.

It’s shocking that the Labour Party in its long history has yet to have a female leader — and austerity and poverty often hit women hardest. This time there are solid female candidates.

Yes, overall we want a winner. The winner is most likely one of those women. And in another 10 years we will see parity in Parliament with a 50-50 split between men and women, fairly representing the electorate.

Have a happy Christmas.
Emily Sheffield, Columnist

Labour needs to learn hard lessons from the election. “Corbynism” may have appeal — scrapping student fees, free broadband, nationalisation — but over-large spending commitments were not seen as credible and people didn’t believe they would have more control over their lives because of increased public ownership.

That is all the sadder because the party accurately identified many core problems of the large disadvantaged section of the community: lack of financial security, low-paying jobs, the absence of steady employment opportunities from our withered industrial base. Until Labour works out how to get the economy to grow much faster than now, it is hard to see how the party is going to produce a convincing manifesto.
John Mills

While thinking of the Prime Minister, I was reminded of the Bard, and a speech by Prince Henry in Henry IV, Part 2: act 5 scene 2:

“This new and gorgeous garment majesty / Sits not so easy on me as you think.— / Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear. / This is the English, not the Turkish court; / Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,/ But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers, / For, by my faith, it very well becomes you...”
Hugh Coleridge

In this season of bleak midwinter, I would like to thank a group of young men and women who helped two American strangers in London. In an unwise move, my husband and I took the Tube from the airport to our hotel near St Paul’s with all our suitcases during rush hour. Befuddled by jetlag, we planted ourselves and our luggage on the wrong side of the flow of foot traffic, like a block of US granite poking from the raging UK stream.

Of course, the worst happened. As my husband got on the escalator, case in each hand, he lost his footing and fell back. Cases flew away and panic would have ensued but for a kind and quick-thinking group. One woman pressed the emergency stop button. Several men gathered our cases and my fallen husband and took us to our train. Human kindness is universal, so it is perhaps unfortunate we still live in a world where it worth pointing out we are elderly Minnesotans and our saviours were all young Britons. If they read this letter, I want them to know their kindness is one of my best memories of their country.
Judy Woodward, St Paul, Minnesota, USA