Apparently Andrea Leadsom, who was (until a few minutes ago) aspiring to lead the Conservative Party and thus – without election – to become PM, has apologised for her remarks about her rival. The withdrawal/apology/wriggling about what she said can be set aside: the clip of her saying it (unless it is an out-and-out fake) and this transcript are quite clear that aunties may be all very well but as a mother, she has real and immediate investment.
“Yes. So really carefully because I don’t know Theresa really well, but I’m sure she will be really sad that she doesn’t have children so I don’t want this to be ‘Andrea’s got children, Theresa hasn’t’ – do you know what I mean? Because I think that would be really horrible. But genuinely I feel being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country. A tangible stake. She possibl[y] has nieces nephews, lots of people. But I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next. So it really keeps you focused on what are you really saying because what it means is you don’t want a downturn – but then ‘never mind let’s look to the ten years hence it will all be fine’. But my children will be starting their lives in that next ten years so I have a real stake in the next year.”
It could almost be that she sought to be a PM who was Mother of the Nation. When Margaret Thatcher did it (falling tone of voice, slight stoop, eye contact) she sometimes managed it well, and the shock to our systems when she roared was all the more stirring/off putting because of it (Ciceronian inflection, voice at the back of the mouth, chin up). This, then, is one of the models of Motherhood: Mother-Knows-Best-But-God-help-you-when-it’s-bedtime.
Leadsom has (or had) a subtler version of it: biological parenthood gives a person a surer motive for investment in the future. So first off, I want to give a shout out for people committed to the immediate and future wellbeing of children and young people: stepparents, for example; fosterers; people without childcare responsibilities for all sorts of reasons; people who have lost children; colleague teachers and academics I know; social workers and medics; good-hearted and generous celibates. I don’t think I am in any way better as a father of six than I might have been with other choices- and who knows what I might have been if I’d taken another path – but I want to challenge the fundamental idiocy of the idea that parenthood per se qualifies you to talk about the future. Even as Mother of the Nation, we have, of course, Elizabeth I as a model…
But on a different tack, today is the Feast of St Benedict, called (for the last few centuries) the Father of Europe, and used – perhaps at the height of the European project – by Paul VI as a beacon of peace, a sign of stability in difficult times:
ma allora questa fuga era motivata dalla decadenza della società, dalla depressione morale e culturale d’un mondo, che non offriva più allo spirito possibilità di coscienza, di sviluppo, di conversazione ; occorreva un rifugio per ritrovare sicurezza, calma, studio, preghiera, lavoro, amicizia, fiducia.
I paraphrase this:
[Benedict’s] flight sprang from the decadence of society, the moral and cultural downturn [the Italian is more expressive] of a world that no longer offered to the spirit opportunities for mindful development and discussion; it needed a refuge in which to rediscover security and calm, study, prayer, work, friendship, trust.
In the moral and emotional depressione that accompanies these post-Brexit weeks, I am pretty sure Andrea Leadsom does not wish to be Mother of Europe, However she, her rival Theresa May, and the scuffling wannabes in Labour (no more edifying than the Conservative scramble) might well consider the values exemplified by Benedict, and above all (Ch4):
Not to give way to anger.
Not to nurse a grudge.
Not to entertain deceit in one’s heart.
Not to give a false peace.
Not to forsake charity.
Not to swear, for fear of perjuring oneself.
To utter truth from heart and mouth.
Not to return evil for evil.
and in this most disrupted and unsettling time – days, weeks, months, years – we might well need – or need to be – leaders who keep the peace. As Benedict decrees of the Cellarer (one of my favourite chapters [31]), ut nemo perturbetur neque contristetur in domo Dei. Keeping us from getting “distracted or upset in the house of God” or the house of Caesar is a tall order.
Except I am not sure whether mere passivity is what is required now. Work and prayer, ora et labora with the pro viso:
Hunc ergo zelum ferventissimo amore exerceant monachi, id est ut honore se invicem præveniant [Ch 72]
Therefore this is the zeal which monastics should practise with the utmost fervour: to try to be first in respecting one another…
nicktomjoe 