Daddy’s home

It’s a truism that all political careers end in failure. But last week the former prime minister David Cameron, a man whose career we might have thought was a textbook illustration of that principle (he resigned in 2016 after calling and then losing the referendum that led to Brexit), made an unexpected comeback. In his latest rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Tory Titanic, Rishi Sunak appointed Cameron to the position of Foreign Secretary. This didn’t please everyone in his party, but some Conservatives were delighted to learn that, in one MP’s much-quoted words, “Daddy’s home”.

That reaction was widely mocked (the word “cringe” was used a lot on social media), but for me it raised an intriguing question about the use of gendered language in politics. Who, politically speaking, is “Daddy”?  

In the past I’ve had more to say about “Mummy”, because the use of maternal labels for female politicians is a cliché of modern political discourse. The Mother is one of the traditional female archetypes (others include the Seductress and the woman warrior or “Iron Lady”) which are used in patriarchal cultures to make female authority intelligible. It’s most popular on the political Right, where it resonates with conservative ideas about women’s nature and social role, and it is often embraced by women leaders themselves. In Germany, for instance, Angela Merkel was originally given the nickname “Mutti” by her opponents, who intended it to portray her as an overbearing nag; but she was able to turn it into a more positive symbol of her motherly concern for her fellow-citizens and her determination to do what was right for them. In the most recent French presidential election, similarly, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen softened her previous hardline image by promising to govern like a “mère de famille”. And though Margaret Thatcher’s main persona was the “Iron Lady”, she also presented herself, when it suited her, as a down-to-earth housewife and mother.

In 2016, after David Cameron resigned, the ensuing Tory leadership contest featured two women candidates, Andrea Leadsom and the eventual victor Theresa May, who were both referred to as “Mummy” in private exchanges among MPs. At a time when the Brexit referendum had divided both the party and the nation, Mummy’s appeal lay in her reputation as a firm disciplinarian: she would sort out the squabbling children and restore some much-needed order. At first glance “Daddy’s home” has a similar vibe, casting the former prime minister as a father-figure whose wise counsel will put a divided and chaotic government back on course. But despite the obvious linguistic parallel between “Daddy” and “Mummy”, politically there are important differences between them.

“Daddy” is not as “natural” a persona for a male leader as “Mummy” is for his female counterpart. Familial labels in general are less commonly used for men in politics, and when they are used the implications are not always positive. In cases where they are positive, the term of choice tends to be the more formal “father” (as with the conventional description of certain revered, and often deceased, politicians like Washington, Gandhi and Mandela as “fathers of the nation”). More familiar/ affectionate labels are liable to be seen as disrespectful, and in some cases they are overtly insulting. “Centrist Dad”, for instance, is a derisive label for middle-of-the-road male politicians who are seen as uncool and ineffectual; “magic grandpa” is a dig at elderly male radicals like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders (and indirectly at the younger activists who support them).

“Daddy” also has another set of meanings which are not so directly linked to a male politician’s politics. While writing this post I found an instructive illustration in Buzzfeed Australia, which had declared 2015 “the year of the political Daddy”. Among the men who featured in its list of political daddies were Malcolm Turnbull (at the time the prime minister of Australia) and Justin Trudeau (who had just become prime minister of Canada). Both led broadly centrist parties (centre-right in Turnbull’s case and centre-left in Trudeau’s), but that wasn’t why they qualified for the “Daddy” label. Turnbull was a daddy because, in the words of a young person whose tweet the article quoted, “he’s a silver fox with good teeth who’d take care of you. He has an i-Pad and an Apple Watch so he’s clearly got money to spare and he could buy you things”. He was a sugar-daddy, in other words. Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, was the daddy equivalent of the “yummy mummy” or the “MILF”—mature and responsible but also hot (or as Buzzfeed put it, “a fine slice of Canadian bacon”).  

Though this piece was obviously meant to be humorous, I think it still tells us something about the political connotations of “Daddy”. And what it mainly tells us, put simply, is that “Daddy” is a trivializing label. Of course you could say the same about “Mummy”, which trivializes women leaders by likening their political power to the pettier authority that mothers have over children. But “Mummy” also serves a more serious purpose: it is used to counter the still-common perception of female leadership as unnatural and female leaders as sexless viragos. “Daddy” does not have an analogous function. Male power, being the historical and cultural norm, does not need to be defended against the charge that it’s unnatural or that it makes a man less manly. On the contrary, one reason why familial labels can be used to insult or trivialize male politicians is that these terms assign men to a domain which is seen as inferior, apolitical and feminized.

In fact, as any feminist will tell you, the institution of the family is far from apolitical: it is one of the foundations of patriarchy, and historically the paterfamilias was an important archetype of male power. But the later “separation of spheres” made the home a domain in which women had control. Though theoretically they remained subordinate to the male “head of household”, in practice they were allowed and indeed expected to take charge at home so that men could devote their energies to more important tasks outside it.

The personae constructed by modern male political leaders are typically based on these public roles: the archetypes they draw on include the patriotic soldier, the inspirational preacher, the hard-headed businessman and the efficient “scientific” manager. A persona like “Daddy”, which locates a man primarily in the domestic rather than the public sphere, risks implying that a male leader is soft or lightweight, preferring the comforts of home to the challenges of public life.

You might wonder, though, if what I’ve just said is out of date. Aren’t male politicians today—including Conservatives—keen to stress their “modern man” credentials by being photographed in their kitchens, parading their families as electoral assets and taking every opportunity to present themselves as “hands-on” parents? Wasn’t Boris Johnson, the father of numerous children (though the exact number remains unconfirmed), sharply criticized for his admission that he had never changed a nappy?

My answer would be “yes and no”. It’s true that contemporary politicians are expected to demonstrate “authenticity” and “relatability” by opening their personal lives to public scrutiny, and that has made it prudent for male leaders to cultivate the image of the “family man”. David Cameron was a case in point: his wife Samantha featured prominently in his election campaigns, and he presented himself as a fully-involved, caring father (though this was slightly undermined when he accidentally left his daughter in a pub). His excruciatingly dull WebCameron channel even featured a video of him doing the washing up.

But these are still largely superficial, token gestures–as we saw during the most recent Tory leadership election, when Rishi Sunak answered a question about the greatest sacrifice he had made by saying that since becoming Chancellor he had been, he was sorry to say, “an appalling husband and father”. This was calculated to tick not only the “modern man” box, but also and more importantly the “you can count on me to focus on the job 24/7/365” box. I’m pretty sure a comparable female politician would not have underlined her dedication to public service by describing herself as “an appalling wife and mother”. “Mummy” is expected to juggle her public and domestic responsibilities: nowadays she’s allowed to talk about how difficult she finds it, but not to admit she has failed or given up. An imperfect mother may be relatable, but one who chooses to neglect her children is just cold and heartless. “Daddy”, by contrast, can be candid about his negligence so long as he presents it as a sacrifice he has had to make (and not, like Boris Johnson, as a badge of alpha-male pride).  

Another problem with the “Daddy” persona has less to do with gender per se than with the way gender intersects with age. Though a literal father can be a (post-pubescent) male of any age, metaphorically paternal labels are ageing. The “centrist Dad” is (attitudinally if not literally) middle-aged—he’s staid rather than adventurous, reliable but dull—while the sugar-daddy is middle-aged-to-old.

These associations sit uncomfortably with the increasing tendency, at least in western democracies, to favour younger men as political leaders. There’s currently an obvious exception in the USA, where it seems likely that both candidates in the next presidential election will be almost 80; but by recent standards that’s unusual. Presidents Clinton and Obama in the US, President Macron in France and Prime Ministers Blair, Cameron and Sunak in the UK were all in their early-to-mid 40s when they took office. For men this appears to be the new sweet spot, the point at which a leader is old enough to have the gravitas his role demands, but also young enough to be perceived as energetic, dynamic and “modern”. For women, on the other hand, it is difficult to appear both youthful and authoritative: if anything political “mummies” are advantaged by being older.

“Daddy’s home” as a reaction to the return of David Cameron was presumably intended to evoke the more positive associations of ageing (experience, wisdom, stability, etc); but there are obvious reasons why so many people found this ludicrous. When Cameron entered Downing Street at the age of 43 he was the youngest British prime minister for almost 200 years; when he resigned he was not quite 50, and as he returns to frontline politics after a comparatively brief absence he is still a few years shy of 60. It’s absurd to cast him as a father figure, an elder statesman returning to the fray to give a new generation the benefit of his wisdom. He isn’t much older than his Cabinet colleagues, and in the short time he’s been away he’s done nothing that would make him any wiser. Where the Blairs and Obamas of the world set up foundations and get involved in international diplomacy, he has devoted his post-prime ministerial years to writing his memoirs and shilling for dodgy financiers.

That it’s possible even to attempt to rebrand Cameron as a wise counsellor or a stabilizing influence speaks volumes about the awfulness of the last seven years. The fact that the Tories have gone through four prime ministers since 2016 makes the Cameron era seem not only more distant in time than it really is, but also, by comparison with the Johnson era or the Truss moment, less politically disastrous than it really was. It was, after all, Cameron’s misjudged referendum gamble that paved the way for the chaos that followed. Now the fire his carelessness started has run completely out of control. The idea that he’s the man to put it out and save his party from electoral oblivion is a delusion born of desperation. (What do his supporters think he’s going to put it out with, the trusty watering-can of blandness? Cringe, indeed.)  

But pondering Cameron’s less than statesmanlike record does bring to mind another aspect of “Daddy” as a cultural archetype. In cartoons and sitcoms he is often a hapless figure, well-meaning but ineffectual; he’s the bumbling fool who doesn’t realize he’s a fool because his family pretends that he’s in charge. So, perhaps Daddy really is home after all. Though not, we may devoutly hope, for long.