It’s time we banished the phrase ‘as a mum’ from public discourse

Terry Prone says Andrea Leadsom ‘has provided a neat case study in mumhood self-delusion, claiming an accretion of extra wisdom as a result of giving birth, which was provably absent’.

IT’S FAIR to guess that UK prime minister Theresa May’s new environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, is unlikely to make speeches that include the phrase “as a mum”, because, courtesy of the London Times, that phrase has bitten the new member of the cabinet and left teeth marks that won’t fade any time soon.

Leadsom is the most prominent of a cohort which holds that motherhood (sorry, mumhood) has developed in them a range of stunning insights which allow them to return to work or seek a prime ministership, confident that nobody can touch them. Bit like those people who come back from the Camino. You wouldn’t mind if they just claimed to have better calf muscles, but no. The walk has changed their lives, raised them up in spiritual terms, and endowed them with new antennae positively shivering with sensitivity.