BORN TO LEAD MEN

Strong women in a man's world (Maureen Waller, The Times, November 2nd, 2006)

“The English like queens,” the grandmother of the future Queen Victoria commented cheerfully on receiving news of her birth. It was not an accolade that was lightly earned. Like latter-day career women aiming for the boardroom, our queens regnant have had to work hard to overcome the drawbacks of their sex. In almost 1,000 years since the Norman Conquest there have been only six — Mary I and Elizabeth I, Mary II and Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II — yet they have almost always been synonymous with success.

When Victoria came to the throne in 1837 the reputation of the monarchy was at a record low. The accession of an 18-year-old queen — young, feminine, decorative and eager to please — was greeted with relief after the reigns of the three previous kings, George III, George IV and William IV, described respectively as “a lunatic, a profligate and a buffoon”.

Victoria’s sex was very much to her advantage. At a time when women had no political voice, she appeared less politically threatening to the opponents of monarchy, and more amenable to constitutional control in the eyes of those who supported a limited monarchy. After her marriage, her carefully contrived domestic image as devoted wife and mother of a large family belied the fact that she was highly active politically, constantly interfering in ministerial decisions and stretching constitutional boundaries almost to breaking point.

During her 64-year reign, the political power of the Crown declined as the franchise expanded, but thanks to her, its prestige and moral influence increased: she left the monarchy vastly stronger than she found it. Longevity helped. By the end of her reign, few people remembered the beginning, or the peaks and dips in her popularity, when republicanism would rear its head. In spite of her apotheosis as Queen-Empress of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, at the time of her Golden Jubilee, Victoria did not expect the monarchy to survive her for long. How surprised and delighted she would have been that her great-great granddaughter Elizabeth II, through her untiring devotion to duty, has steered it safely into the 21st century.

C’mon, admit it. Who would you be more inclined to fight for, Bill or Hillary? ("None of the above" is not an acceptable answer)