Trump’s election victory in 2016, in spite of his “grab them by the pussy” tapes, marked a clear shift in our expectations of politicians. Evidence of sexual harassment? Oh well. Farage’s anti-immigration billboard proving eerily reminiscent of Nazi propaganda? Never mind. Johnson illegally proroguing parliament to silence democracy? Vote him in!
Politicians can do what they like. Providing, of course, that they’re men.
If a politician has the audacity to be a woman, then expectations are somewhat different.
During the 2019 general election results, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was called “graceless and nasty” for cheering when her party took back the marginal seat of East Dunbartonshire from the Lib Dems.
A pre-interview rolling camera showed Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon punching the air in delight and smiling broadly at the news that her party had reclaimed a tightly-contested seat from the rival party leader, Jo Swinson.
Minutes after Sky News shared the link online, Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, tweeted “This is so unacceptably ungracious.”
Just a few minutes after Moran’s comment, Jim Waterson, Media Editor at The Guardian (yes, the liberal Guardian!) posted the video with the antagonistic description: “Nicola Sturgeon caught by Sky when she learned about Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson losing her seat.”
Very shortly after Waterson, Nigel Farage also shared the video with the comment, “Graceless and nasty from Sturgeon.”
When I first saw these tweets condemning Sturgeon’s lack of “grace”, I assumed she must have pointed down the lens of the camera and sneered, “In your FACE, Jo! You Swin-some, you lose some!” before flipping her the bird and karate kicking the air.
Imagine my surprise, then, when the video simply showed a party leader feeling very, very happy that her MP had won the fight for a difficult seat. It was nothing strange. I’d seen this type of elated reaction many times before on election nights – as had Moran, Waterson and Farage too, presumably.
But those leaders of past election clips weren’t slated for their celebrations. So what’s different?
(That was a rhetorical question, of course, because you already know the answer. It’s gender.)
Sturgeon defended her reaction the following day, in what many might consider to be a needless apology. “Sorry, I got overexcited,” Sturgeon said. She had already expressed commiserations to Swinson during the official Sky interview, but she did so again.
“Overexcited” seems reasonable: this was not a bog-standard SNP retention. East Dunbartonshire has been home to a long-standing tussle between the Lib Dems and SNP. Jo Swinson first won the seat in 2005, but was ousted by an SNP candidate in 2015, before Swinson got it back again in 2017. It was no wonder, then, that Sturgeon was thrilled to take it from her in 2019. There were just 149 votes difference between them, and the camera witnessed a moment of candid surprise and delight.
In this context, would – could – anyone be “polite and calm”? Because that’s how the Cambridge Dictionary defines Farage and Moran’s expectations of “gracious” behaviour: “pleasant, polite, calm”.
If footballers can shout and run around with their shirts up after kicking a ball into a net, why should Sturgeon fold her hands in her lap and smile quietly at the camera? This is a life’s work, a country’s future in the balance, a hard-fought victory on a knife edge.
I asked Oxford University Professor of Linguistics, Debbie Cameron, whether “ungracious” in this context seemed like dog-whistle sexism to her. (I like leading questions: it speeds up the conversation.) She noted that whilst you’d need to research and compare how many times the word has been used in election results for both men and women, “intuitively it does smack of expecting women to be ladylike/self-effacing”.
An internet search for “election result ungracious” pulls up a load of Sturgeon-related news results from this week, along with one other story: a Tasmanian politician was called “extraordinarily ungracious” after her election loss speech two years ago. Yes, her speech. Another woman. Funny coincidence!
Now, Jim Waterson’s comment didn’t refer to “grace”, like the other tweets, but it did frame the clip in a strangely disingenuous way: “Nicola Sturgeon caught by Sky when she learned about Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson losing her seat.” The verb “caught” suggests she was doing something shameful, and he captions it to suggest some sadistic pleasure at another person’s loss, as opposed to the reality, which was a celebration of personal gain. More than 2000 people replied to his tweet, many criticising his combative wording, but at the time of writing, Waterson had not responded further.
Is all this because Sturgeon dares to be a woman in politics, to be successful, and to show her absolute joy in that success? Or is it also because Jo Swinson is a woman, and people expect to see some special sort of condescending kid-glove treatment when two women are in competition?
This question was turning over in my mind as I switched on the BBC, which then helpfully confirmed my suspicions. Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You was commenting on Sturgeon, sarcastically remarking on “one woman remainer” supporting another.
This is party politics. Why, just because they’re both women, should it become Victorian high tea?
There’s a patronising whiff of women in politics being seated at the children’s table at a wedding breakfast, while the big boys make their important speeches to the grown-ups.
“Now, be nice,” Dad might say before he swaggers over to find the best man and make some hilarious jokes about tits.
Dad in this analogy is Farage, of course, asking the ‘girls’ to be gracious while he calls Belgium a “non-country”, uses an image of Hitler in an anti-Euro campaign, and opines that “any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door”. (All actual things that have happened, by the way.)
As I see it, Sturgeon is a fantastic role model for girls and women, and in humouring those who sought offence in her delight, she has demonstrated more grace than a good leader should ever require. Sturge on, Sturgeon. Sturge on.
