Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think three female party leaders should manage a debate without group cuddling on stage?

144 replies

Arsenic · 16/04/2015 22:41

Just pfft.

OP posts:
muminhants · 17/04/2015 14:05

They just had to behave as professional politicians.

I give you PMQs.

Eigg · 17/04/2015 14:06

erm, excuse me, Nicola Sturgeon is the First Minister of Scotland, so I would have though that, yes, she has a reasonably good idea of what it takes to run a country.

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 14:07

No, Hants don't give me PMQs Smile

That's a race to the bottom line of argument.

OP posts:
muminhants · 17/04/2015 14:13

I don't think it is. Week in week out a bunch of idiot schoolboys refuse to listen to each other and are simply rude. It has nothing to do with ruling the country or actually answering the questions properly. Unprofessional, tedious and a waste of time.

Three female party leaders give each other a quick hug at the end of TV debate. I don't see the unprofessionalism.

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 14:19

PMQs (largely but not wholly men) often makes politics look boorish and petty.

Three female political leaders emoting at the end of an unremarkable TV debate - one of several, in a long election campaign - to my mind, makes female politicians look drippy, unprofessional and over-emotional.

Two different issues and both clearly in the eye of the beholder.

OP posts:
OrlandoWoolf · 17/04/2015 14:23

I think a hug at the end of PMQs would be great. Or a handshake.
Or - and this is the real thing, no jeering,insulting, shouting at each other, ignoring real questions and just showing off.

The politicians keep talking about reforming it. It never happens. Westminster boys' club at its worst.

I don't see why it had to be a group hug. It could have been a hug. Like friends do.

Viviennemary · 17/04/2015 14:26

I think it was unnecessary. Still they are all great pals I expect and hope to beat big bad wolf Nigel in the election. It's all a bit pathetic IMHO.

PrivatePike · 17/04/2015 14:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

noddyholder · 17/04/2015 14:35

Over thinking a bit here!

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 14:36

They are supposed to have all been media trained to the nth, arent they?

OP posts:
BestIsWest · 17/04/2015 14:37

I had no problem with it tbh.

BeyondDoesBootcamp · 17/04/2015 14:38

Actually, i've seen their little cwtch now and think it looks fine. It sounded here more tacky than it looked :)

morningtoncrescent62 · 17/04/2015 14:44

I didn't think too much about the hug till I read this thread. Now I'm thinking it was probably a 'feminine' thing to do where feminine = connecting with each other in an obvious and affectionate way and where masculine = more distant and less obviously connected. The three on stage who happened to have a conventionally feminine style also happened to be women - which is probable but not inevitable. Thatcher certainly wasn't like that, nor as others have pointed out, is Merkel. If Patrick Harvie (leader of the Scottish Greens) had been on stage he'd probably have joined the hug. So would Mandela. Politics has overwhelmingly been associated with conventional masculinity but I don't think it has to stay that way.

Grantaire · 17/04/2015 14:46

Eigg, I apologise. In hindsight, I don't mean solely running a country, I mean trying to run the UK. I was responding specifically to this:

"If these women feel stressed in a televised debate, how the hell are they going to cope when faced with a genuinely serious diplomatic incident that potentially could be seen as an act of war by a major world power (the Litvinenko incident was very touch-and-go at one point)? How are they going to cope with foreign incursions into British territorial waters, such as we are seeing at present in the waters around Scotland? How will they respond with a clear head to a major terrorist incident that requires decisions on the hoof?"

My point was that up to this point, none of them have had to be the figurehead dealing with this sort of thing. Nicola has a taste of it and I'm amazed she's still going ahead. Grin

What's wrong with emotions in politics? Arsenic, your language clearly shows that any emotion means that politics is reduced. You talk about dissolving, not comporting themselves. I think emotion has a place. Surely it needs to.

It does nothing to set feminism back. If it had been two men hugging or one man and one woman, would you say the same thing? If they felt the need for a personal point of contact and offered a warm, human embrace to each other as three people trying to better their country, then I'd rather they hug in front of the nation than repress their natural need for human contact and reassurance.

I am a feminist and I raise my dd the same way. I will not teach her that there is a job in the world that means you have to shy away from affection and natural, human, spontaneous celebration of shared experience.

Grantaire · 17/04/2015 14:49

It's worth bearing in mind that feminism has long fought against the stereotype that women are too emotional to carry responsibility. All you do by telling a woman not to be openly emotional is reinforce this. It should be an irrelevance in terms of the sex of the politician. Saying SHE was too emotional and mentioning feminism in the same breath implies that the fight in feminism is somehow bound up in preventing emotion in females, conversely strengthening the stereotype we're trying to move on from.

noddyholder · 17/04/2015 14:52

I am a feminist and all my friends too and I don't see any of them as unprofessional or weak for showing emotion. Interestingly my mother brought us up to think emotion was a sign of weakness and hugging etc was just not 'her thing'. She has not a genuine friend in the world left and sees none of her children but she was tough as old boots in teh workplace and throughout life

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 14:54

I just don't accept that women are more emotional, though. It feeds the myth that they are to behave like this.

And it looked very pointedly a female group hug Grant, didn't it? Or didn't it?

Obviously rtaher close to over analysing it now, but there seemed to be a sense that their common gender was being given a bit too much significance by the three of them.

OP posts:
Grantaire · 17/04/2015 14:57

Last point for now, promise.

Arsenic, could it not be argued that you're reducing things down or devaluing the debate? Seriously, after the debate last night I was left thinking about my vote, talking to DH about our opinions on what was said. I didn't feel the need to walk away from it annoyed and complaining about three people's choice to have a hug. I didn't even notice in any real way that they hugged. I was watching the debate. I wasn't judging their emotional responses to each other post debate. Perhaps it says something about your expectations of women? You say it's merely your expectation of politicians but given the ingrained behaviour of many politicians, it'd be quite easy to make a case for a "political behaviour" to be many things, some horribly negative. I don't want them to be politicians. Just people will do. People capable of running our government would be awesome.

It's fine to not like public displays of affection. It's even fine to grumble about them. It's probably not fine to tell people a simple hug is imbued with hidden meaning.

Isn't it just another irrelevant thing to judge them on?

Grantaire · 17/04/2015 14:58

I didn't look very pointedly like a female group hug to me. It looked like the three minority left wing parties signalling the end of the debate and being friendly towards each other.

noddyholder · 17/04/2015 15:00

I don't think they are 'more' emotional but some 'people' are more likely to be physical in that way than others. Its not a big deal definitely not good to consider it weak or a sign of anything bar mutual respect and probably relief!

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 15:08

Arsenic, could it not be argued that you're reducing things down or devaluing the debate?

No the debate's worth debating Grin

The hug interested me as a separate point (although it's getting a bit boring now Wink )

You could argue that the hug devalued the debate, if you were feeling strident.....

It's probably not fine to tell people a simple hug is imbued with hidden meaning

Don't be silly, there's nothing hidden about it Smile

OP posts:
PtolemysNeedle · 17/04/2015 15:12

But why do you see hugging as unprofessional?

Just because it it's not typical of a group of politicians on a stage, doesn't make it unprofessional. Yours is only an opinion, not a fact.

Blueskybrightstar · 17/04/2015 15:14

I think it's great they hugged-it suggests they might be there for ideological reasons and are genuinely open to working together, as opposed to the crappy 'us against them' adversarial politics that mess up every nation. Being open in that way is a good sign.

Also can we stop saying stuff like 'oh I don't like that they hug'? Who gives a sh£t, really, its up to the policies and their characters. focusing on, and criticising minutiae like this (hug) ultimately undermines them. If we want to see more women in power and support them wtf are we talkiñg about hoe they hug, of all things?!

Arsenic · 17/04/2015 15:25

I think it's great they hugged-it suggests they might be there for ideological reasons and are genuinely open to working together, as opposed to the crappy 'us against them' adversarial politics that mess up every nation. Being open in that way is a good sign.

Ideological reasons? As opposed to? You don't think Milliband is ideologically driven, for example?

OP posts:
Arsenic · 17/04/2015 15:29

Yours is only an opinion, not a fact.

Of course it is Ptolemy but it's not a really wild opinion, is it? Do you all hug in business meetings constantly?

And I am really genuinely amazed that so many posters think women are intrinsically more emotional than men (and therefore vice versa).

OP posts: