GRAZIA
In a shock political twist, David Cameron has been appointed Foreign Secretar y by Rishi Sunak. Sophie Walker arg ues it shows men cover for men – to the exclusion of women
remember david cameron? Former PM, architect of Brexit; Remainer who delivered a referendum result to leave the EU? Who oversaw Britain’s international status reduced to irrelevance ; watched the UK descend into near-civil war and stoked the rise of populist politics for the angry and disenfranchised? And then left, resigning with a short statement and a little ditty under his breath as he walked away from a cratered Downing Street ?
Of course you remember him. Well, less than 10 years after Brexit, and just seven years after signing an £800,000 publishing deal for his memoirs, Cameron is back as Foreign Secretary. This is profoundly shocking in the way that trolling can be shocking – causing furious dismay, then the realisation – but of course. Because in the patriarchy, men fail up. Only women really fail.
Don’t believe me? Look at the person who promoted Cameron. Rishi Sunak, who failed so badly as Chancellor that he got to be PM and preside for a bit longer over the fallout of his failures: a cost of living crisis causing premature deaths (some of the most deprived areas may see nearly 70 more premature deaths per 100,000 annually, according to a new study published in the BMJ Public Health); widening inequality between rich and poor; NHS crises pushing it to near-collapse ; school buildings in literal collapse ; not to mention £11bn squandered in debt interest payments, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Scroll to another news story – there’s Nigel Farage, probably our best known politician, thanks to hours and hours of airtime he was given by (male) media moguls, despite his failure to get elected to Parliament in seven attempts – now being paid a reported £1.5m to appear on I’m A Celebrity. This isn’t just a crassly mediocre man getting yet another leg-up. It’s a grim opportunity for a racist chancer who went to prep school and banked with the millionaires’ establishment Coutts to yet again present his ideas as common-sense and anti-establishment – to an audience of millions. Farage isn’t even setting a trend, merely following in the footsteps of failed Health Secretary Matt Hancock, on whose watch we had one of the worst increases in death rates of major European economies during the pandemic. That didn’t stop him cashing in with a stint on I’m A Celebrity last year, or from polishing off his brass neck to pop up on Celebrity SAS this year.
Rich (mainly white) men prove time and time again that they are terrible at their jobs and yet are still considered the only suitable candidates for those same jobs. After
