On Tory Leadership & Teenage Girls
It’s long been argued that girls grow up different to boys. Mentally, they’re more mature, but emotionally, they’re crazy pants. In academic subjects, they outperform boys — as long as their mind is doing the driving. But once their hearts are involved, all bets are off and the train gets completely derailed. There’s a lot of passionate and creative energy in the heart.
To the current Tory electorate, Boris Johnson is like a bad boyfriend. They’ve been complaining to their friends about him for ages “He’s such a narcissist. So selfish. He lies. OMG I cannot tell you how much he lies. He cheats. He got drunk and told this really inappropriate joke… so embarrassing. It’s over. No, it’s definitely over this time. I want someone honest and kind… someone with integrity.”
Unfortunately, the new candidates (Truss and Sunak) seem dull and boring by comparison. Integrity starts to look like a meaningless word, given that (deep down) we’re all wired for self-interest and survival. Honesty, kindness, and integrity are like unicorns. We love them in stories of mythical forests, but we know they don’t exist in a political landscape.
And so, after a few weeks on dating apps, the ex-boyfriend starts to look more and more attractive. The lies and infidelities are glossed over and reframed as “rascally behaviour” mischievous and high spirited. Quite adorable really, when juxtaposed with the earnest obsequiousness that accompanies the profiles of the other candidates. “I offer a safe pair of hands” almost makes you long for the hands that were in the cookie jar.
Tory party members are already chanting “Bring back Boris” or cheering when his face appears on a video monitor. They must know he’s a prick, but they seem to find a kind of authenticity to his prickishness, when compared to Sunak and Truss. Nadine Dorris recently tweeted a picture of Rishi knifing Boris in the back by superimposing their faces onto a scene from Julius Caeser. “Et tu Rishi!”.
Boris Johnson was voted in by a landslide, despite his many character defects, presumably, because the electorate’s inner teenage girl found him unpredictable and interesting. They had a sense that it didn’t matter who they voted for so they might as well have someone entertaining. I mean he wanted to be “world king” as a child — how mad is that! Teenage girls do love a confident boy — mainly because they are so lacking in confidence themselves.
Inside all of us is this archetype of the teenage girl. The onset of puberty (for both girls and boys) gives us the power to create life which, let’s face it, is seriously powerful energy. The chief characteristics of this archetype are the need to love and the need to create. This makes sense. If we don’t love our ideas, we will lack the momentum to carry them to fruition. No one teaches us how to manage this energy, so we shut it down or allow it to be directed unconsciously… we love obsessively; we create recklessly.
Passion is the capacity to give and receive love. Because this could result in rejection, we shut it down, and become passionate about things that can’t love us back… like fictional movie characters or rock stars.
Creativity is the capacity to allow a new idea to emerge from inside us so it can be expressed in the outside world. Because this could result in humiliation, we stifle our unique expression and reverse the process by consuming the creativity of others. We shut down our inner world and become fascinated by anything new or different in the outside one… like car crashes or unscripted politicians.
Our inability to handle our own life force energy means that most of us suppress our power, close our hearts and live in our head, where we can maintain the illusion of being in control.
In the late 1960s the Beatles acted as a catalyst to unleash all this suppressed energy. Once triggered, the energy was so strong the teenage girls couldn’t hold it in their bodies and they released it in a primal way by screaming and crying. This wave of Beatlemania lasted a few years, before it crashed and disappeared.
These days, the need to be in control squashes the spontaneous expression of our spirit. Politicians aren’t interested in being unique or authentic, they’re desperate to look and act in a way that will make people vote for them. You can imagine the brief to the stylist “Warm but assertive; Friendly but takes no shit; Concerned but willing to make tough decisions.”
You can also imagine the coaching from the stylist “Smile. But not too much, you look like a Bond villain. Direct eye contact. Hmmm, now you just look crazy. Can we try sincere?“
Of course, trying to look sincere is a contradiction in terms. Sincerity actually means devoid of deceit, pretence, and hypocrisy, three qualities the Tory party seem to have in spades.
No wonder the car crash ex-boyfriend starts to look appealing again. In a recent poll 65% of Tory voters said they’d prefer the reinstatement of Boris rather than either of the two candidates on offer!
We all need to grow up our inner teenage girl or we’ll continue to be seduced by charlatans or bored to death by the uninspiring charades on the nightly news.
After all, the Beatles didn’t create the energy. It was there all along, like electricity, just waiting for a lightning rod. If we tapped into our creative power and learned how to direct it wisely, just imagine what could be achieved. Huge waves of love, passion, and compassion could be harnessed and distributed where needed. And with some Jedi warrior training and a Tina Turner soundtrack, the waves wouldn’t crash and disappear, they’d just keep on rolling…. rolling… r…