Can short people do politics?
Yes, there are some success stories. But height can be a barrier to power
“Well, when I walk behind short people I feel like I'm going to fall over because I start taking these little steps, and I can't take little steps.”
Venus Williams
Let’s imagine, as a small person, politics was the career I wanted. (It’s not, but given I did study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at university, you never can rule it out).
Creating policies that make people’s lives better is one of those things where height shouldn't impact performance. That should, theoretically at least, be determined by a mix of experience, aptitude, vision, intelligence, empathy and dedication. What should matter is that our politicians make the right decisions at the right times for the benefit of all.
Does height have any bearing on that equation? You’d think we’d be eager to focus on what those in power actually do. But we aren’t.
We make height a topic of political conversation. Take this excerpt from Mirror associate editor Kevin Maguire, part of a column he wrote for The New Statesman, as a case in point:
“Straining to stay on her plinth and avoid permanent quarantine is low-flying Priti Patel. No 10 [Downing Street] installs a platform behind the podium when the matchbox-sized home secretary is risked on a 5pm TV briefing. The added inches fail to make up the numbers in the garbled statistics given by Priti Useless.”
What a hilarious anecdote from the corridors of Westminster. One may be no defender of Ms Patel. Quite the opposite, in fact. But of all the things to call her out on, is height really the right target? Does it not just weaken one’s case if you wanted to hold her to account on something actually important that you had previously focussed on such trivialities?
And if she’s matchbox-sized, what does that make me? Match-sized?
Maybe Maguire is simply channelling his inner Shakespeare, who writes of Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that “though she be but little, she is fierce” when she repeatedly acts against the will of her father. Maybe he is actually doing a great service to Patel. Or maybe he’s just slagging her off.
The first words of my first online search result for Patel, courtesy of a profile in The Week magazine, are “small, scrappy and spunky.” The latter two are character traits, which may or may not be relevant to her fitness to govern. The first is simply a physical observation.
Or so one would think. But being small has a bearing far beyond a spatial measurement in the world of politics as much as in other professions - if not more so.
Patel takes her fair share of flack for having the temerity to be 5’3’’. Or 5’6’’, according to other internet sources. That there’s such discrepancy in the measurement may well say something about how keen Patel is to be identified as 5’3’’: probably not very.
The media tended to treat the then-home secretary much like the Downing Street cat Larry; little, feisty, not afraid to brawl it out when adversaries step on her turf. It’s almost as if they both genuinely have retractable claws they can extend when they sense a threat. But neither should be let anywhere near high office, or nervous children, the narrative around Patel’s height suggests.
That assumed feistiness rings true of other (female) politicians of shorter stature. As one-time culture secretary Nadine Dorries once said: "I'm 5’3’’ and need every inch of my Louboutin heels to look my male colleagues in the eye. If high heels were banned in Westminster, no one would be able to find me.”
Such jibes are often tongue-in-cheek. Humour can be a political weapon when applied correctly. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (5’7’’) opened his 2021 Conservative Party Conference speech with the immortal line: “These last few days have been such a joy, meeting you face to face, and hearing so many of you say to me ‘wow you’re even shorter in real life”
That got as big as chuckle as a crusty room can muster.
But satire works best when it has a ring of truth, when it needles what we were thinking all along, but hadn’t the courage to put into words.
I would never bash the ever-excellent and ever-hilarious Private Eye, but I will use it as an illustration. In the aftermath of bullying allegations levied against Patel in early 2020, the Eye penned a mock “unseen episode” of the satirical TV show Yes Minister.
Patel says: “The Prime Minister reckons I can’t have bullied you because I’m too small”.
Sir Humphrey, her aid, replies: “Yes, it’s not only your temper that is short”.
“I’m only five foot,” says Patel.
“Is that wide? Or tall?” comes the reply.
That’s actually pretty good, as jokes about small politicians, and particularly Patel, go. As was a routine on Radio 4 aired around the same time by Bangladeshi-Pakistani comedian Eshaan Akbar, who readily attested from his own upbringing that “hell hath no fury like a small Asian woman scorned.”
“In the same way an elephant is scared of a mouse, taller people are simply afraid of the sudden movements of the smaller kind,” he quipped.
Even Patel’s “extremely tall” husband describes her (we must assume affectionately) as his “personal piranha” in that profile in The Week.
Small men in politics don’t get a much friendlier write-up. When Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford said he wanted to fine English drivers if they entered his country and spread the coronavirus, a Tory MP said he was “guilty of small man syndrome.”
Though he didn’t appear to have an official height listed online, judging by public appearances at least, it must have escaped that MP’s attention that Drakeford couldn’t be far off the 5’9’’ the Conservative Party’s then-leader Boris Johnson measured. Perhaps they were suggesting he was overcompensating for the diminutive size of the country of Wales instead. Perhaps even entire nations can get insecure over their proportions.
The Tory MP in question is anyone’s guess: thankfully for the parliamentarian in question the Daily Mail kept their identity hidden lest we know exactly who had treated the paper’s journalist to such a dignified rant.
Maybe the MP really was just talking about the Welsh in general though. The average Welshman (5’9.5’’) does in fact seem to be exactly half an inch shorter than the average Englishman (5’10’’). Spare a thought for the poor Scots (5’9’’) and Northern Irish though (5’9’’), who come in marginally shorter still. Those height differences are mirrored in the women of the four nations of the United Kingdom, with England coming in at an average of 5’4.5’’ , Wales of 5’4’’, and Scotland and Northern Ireland trailing up the rear at 5’3.5’’ apiece.
Maybe the situation is even more dire than we originally thought for our Welsh cousins. The study that revealed those figures was based on self-report data and, when asked, we tend to over exaggerate our own height - more on that later - so the average citizen of the goodship Wales is likely to be even shorter than that.
What you hopefully see I’m arriving at is that, in politics and business, tall stature acts as a signifier of authority and winning character. I’ll have a proper run through the numbers in next week’s Small Stories.