Bad Campaign

I have just seen the latest Tory electioneering poster and cannot believe what it says. For those of you who have not seen it, it’s a simple blue poster with a picture of a woman who looks as if she is related to Samantha Cameron, bearing the legend, Married People Are Just Better.

So, according to David Cameron, as a single woman, I am just not good enough. Even if I happened to be a nun wiping the brows of dying AIDS victims in Africa, or a Medicine Sans Frontier doctor voluntarily performing surgery on crippled children, I am just not as good as someone who is MARRIED. Is it really that different to the outdated adage, that behind every great man is a great woman?

So how exactly would marriage make me better? Am I better because I have someone to take out the rubbish? Or that I have someone’s socks to wash? And has anyone told men this? ‘I am sorry husband, but you cannot be cross with me for spending our weekly food budget on a pair of shoes, because we are married, and that just makes me better than about anyone on the entire planet.’ Yup. Mother Theresa, the Dalai Llama, and George Clooney. They’re just total losers.

But here’s the real snag. Has David Cameron even considered that about 98% of single women would be delighted to be married, except men don’t much want to be? Cameron has in effect, just alienated about most of the single female population of the UK who now have to sit on the tube staring at this smug poster, gnashing their teeth because they have more chance of being killed by a terrorist than living in connubial bliss.

So how to resolve this problem? I want to be better and I have no one willing me to marry me right now. But as I sat here alone last night as a single, useless and lumpen just-not-good-enough member of society watching Newsnight, a suitable object for my self-improvement presented itself to me in the shape of Rory Stewart.
Rory is THE thinking womans crumpet. Not only has he walked 6000 miles across the Middle East with his dog, and written about it in his book, 'The Places In Between', he actually understands the politics of the region. After serving as an officer of the British Army and a diplomat, he was made deputy governor of two provinces in Iraq at the age of 29. He has helped Prince Charles by living in and developing a not-for-profit project in Kabal to regenerate the commercial centre of the city using traditional Afghani skills, has a working knowledge of the languages of the Middle East, and is a director at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Wow.

He always looks as if he has just got out of bed, he has funny teeth, and an odd kind of face, but this man radiates philanthropy, compassion, intelligence and moral decency. He is so not a typical member of the nasty party, they should consider themselves honoured to have him.

As I watched him on Newsnight, struggling with his obvious concern at the woeful lack of understanding any of us have (politicians especially) about the political and religious factions within Afghanistan, I couldn’t help wondering where all the other Rory Stewart’s are. To have people who are so obviously well informed, must be a priority.

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