Not trying to sound lovely, Basicbrown.
She was the second-choice contender to lead this country through whatever shit hits the fan before the next general election -- anything from Brexit fallout to something completely unforseen, like a major terrorist attack.
After a very, very brief period of saying 'pick me', she's stepped down. As JudyCoolibar said, the rationale that she wanted to remove herself from consideration for the sake of unity and the greater good was equally valid a week ago. Even if it's true, she's made it sound unconvincing by letting or even purposefully aiding her campaign issues and departure be spun by the media as a case of personal weakness. The Telegraph interview published this morning being a major example:
When Andrea Leadsom came on the phone yesterday afternoon I could tell from her voice that she’d been crying. After what had happened, the last thing she wanted was to talk to another journalist, but she agreed, with great trepidation, to speak to me as we’d planned.
...she admits she has felt “under attack, under enormous pressure. It has been shattering.”
The lovely, confident, sparky woman I met on Friday sounds like the life force has drained out of her. Genuinely (a favourite Leadsom word), I feel for her. Politics at the highest level is a brutal game.
According to a Cabinet minister who spoke anonymously to Pearson, Leadsom needed to “prove she can take the heat or get back to the kitchen”. This is the kind of snide bullshit, overt or otherwise, that prospective female leaders are up against: the suspicion that, when it comes to the 'brutal game' of high level politics, they'll break.
Leadsom's leadership campaign would've been dismal by any standards, but none of the male gobshites who've fallen or been shoved on their swords in the past month have made it about personal impact or complained about intense scrutiny and pressure -- or, if they have, I haven't noticed it being spun that way by the media.
Either Leadsom thought depicting herself as vulnerable was a winner she gave Pearson that interview; said the right words which permitted Pearson's ostensibly supportive (but actually very patronising) piece to be written or she was completely incompetent when dealing with the media.
It is for the best that she's stood down, but she's managed to give various journalists and commentators the opportunity to tell the story as 'lovely sparky confident woman, so ambitious, utterly breaks down under brief period of domestic pressure, oh what a shame'. And that's a fucking downer, considering how few women there are in positions of power, and what gender-driven bullshit they have to contend with to get there.