Women are traditionally associated with the care and protection of the human race. They are not only mothers of their children but also of our planet Earth. From ancient times the goddess of birth, love and death, the Moon’s phases, the perpetual source of mercy, the Madonna, Isis, Alpanu of the Etruscans, the eternal feminine has radiated her perennial, ecstatic charms onto the dour pragmatic world of the male.

Metamorphosed into the Lady with the lamp, Florence Nightingale, deified in the effigy of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I, worshipped in her saintliness, whether it be Mother Teresa of Calcutta or her martyred adolescence like Lucca’s own Gemma Galgani women have been primarily associated with their role of nurturing, preserving nature, and, indeed, pro-creators of the human race. As the SeeBee sailors the musical ‘South Pacific’ succinctly sing ‘there is nothing like a dame’.

Yet, in the midst of at least one political sphere women may be the opposite of the qualities expressed in their mythical status. How can someone, born in a migrant family, brought up in often straightened circumstances, with a Paris Sorbonne qualification, with a re-appointment to the government’s second most important job – thanks to the support of her similarly heritaged prime minister – hold such contrary views? 

She launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister who appointed her to her job and accused him of betraying the nation.

She is a rabid supporter of Brexit despite her university degree and love of French literature which was possible, not just with a love of Europe but with EU funds that supported her education there.

She dreams of sending ‘hurricanes’ of migrants with backgrounds often very similar to hers to the jungles of Rwanda.

She, with a comfortable home in a plush, leafy suburb, declares that London’s huddling homeless masses have chosen deliberately to sleep in tents on the metropolis pavements or lay their sleeping bags in the subways not out of necessity but as a conscious lifestyle choice.

She is convinced that members of the global LGBT community use their labels as a prime means of obtaining political asylum.

As for the unemployed, her advice is that if they can’t find a job they should train as fruit pickers or abattoir or toilet attendants.

As for her use of words destined to divide, foment hate and segregate, these have been consistently condemned, especially by those who have suffered similar torments foisted by intolerant societal groups.

Last but not least: the way she fobbed off her speeding offence. But then she is already way off track and a quite irresponsible user both of her car and of her government post.

And yet ‘Suella-Cruella’ is just one woman among several others with the same kind of extremist views so contradictory to their background. Her previous incumbent, again of similar heritage, ‘Pretty-awful’, held similar views.  And the great matriarch of British politics, ‘Thatcher-(school-milk) snatcher’, made even the most right-wing male politician speak as effectively as a (quote) ‘dead sheep’.

In Italy we have, of course, the archetypical (her words) ‘Italian, mother, Christian’, Giorgia Meloni of the way-right-wing ‘Fratelli d’Italia’ party. Opposing her (at least she’s a woman) is the left-wing Swiss-born, lesbian lover, atheist Elly Schlein.

Interestingly, although on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both Braverman and Schlein have Jewish family connections: Braverman’s husband and Schlein’s father are Jews.

Can I think of any major female political leader who is not fervently right-wing, divisive and anti-inclusiveness today? In other words someone who is, according to many, ‘woke’?

Rosa Luxembourg perhaps? But then that’s history.

Meanwhile, the list of right-wing populist female political leaders such as Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidl and Corinna Miazga grows. Women supporting traditionally anti-feminist parties??? I wonder why. Any answers?