Looking Beyond Britain's Post "Blair Babe" Politics

Image: Stylish fifty something Christine Lagarde, French Minister for Economic Affairs.

News this weekend that Brazil is likely to have a sixty something woman President put in to perspective the election of Miliband Junior as UK Leader of the Opposition. It was also a shame that Diane Abbott apparently lost out to the politics of envy over the choice of a private education for her son, just when I thought such "Old Left" hang-ups had lost out to New Labour.

In the run up to the General Election, I lamented the absence of the "Herd Matriarch" in British politics, as distinct from those "Folletted" women politicians struggling to look forty something when now nearer sixty than fifty. As someone a lot nearer fifty than forty herself, I am actually being cruel to be kind when I say this.

Unfortunately for we more mature ladies looking "ten years younger" has been one of the great aspirations since the Blair Babe years. Indeed, it is now a requirement for "the boys" as well, with baby-faced male politicians like Cameron, Clegg and the Milibands all doing better than their more mature (looking) colleagues.

Poor "old" Alistair Darling had to point out, as in the BBC interviewer's words, he handed over to "the next generation" of Labour politicians that he did not yet have "one foot in the grave". How did British politics arrive at this advanced state of ageism, I wonder, and how can the body politic be restored to a more sensible demographic ?

Were it not the case that European politics still looks like a relatively mature state of affairs, I might have deduced that politicians become younger as their populations age, and younger countries have older leaders, based on the experience of Britain and Brazil, for instance. However, this would not explain the enduring success of "Mother Merkel" in Germany.

No, I think the cult of youth in UK politics must be the new "British Disease", reflecting a society dictated to and dominated by its visual media, including the British Broadcasting Corporation. Something needs to be done about this. Maybe it's high time we more mature women staged a continental-style coup, ejected those hair dye fascists, and sported French-style grey hair.