Because everyone is going to be talking, writing, blogging, tweeting about the biggest TV wedding ever (two billion people watching at last count) I thought I would break away and write about something that has landed British Prime Minister David Cameron in quite a spot this week! So far, post-election, the Premier has been walking

a tightrope between divided public opinion and coalition politics, managing not to tumble down from his high wire act. But strangely for such a seasoned performer, during Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament, he has managed to single-handedly annoy a large swathe of British women. And so he may be pondering over more than what he wore for the wedding, this weekend, perhaps a little peeved about his purported gaffe. Was it really a slip, or was it just a joke gone wrong?
Even Mumsnet, a website on which young UK mothers collectively write and keep in touch with each other, was disapproving of Mr Cameron. And that could be worrying. The website has become a barometer for popular opinion among young women, and from all reports the bloggers were registering their distaste with Mr Cameron casual remark, in Parliament. In his defence, he says, it was meant to be funny. Yet, for many it ended up sounding sexist. Gender discrimination is something the modern British woman takes very seriously and before Mr Cameron could say “Catherine Middleton” he was being back to lampooned as a typical Tory, an image he has desperately tried to overturn.
The supposed “insult” took place during a heated exchange (as often happens during Prime Minister’s Questions) over the National Health Service (NHS) reforms. This has been a difficult area for Mr Cameron to negotiate because in his pre-election promises, he had supposedly ring-fenced the NHS. However, the overall budgetary cuts have meant that the NHS is also going to be tinkered with. The proposed reforms also suggest that general practitioners (GPs) be more involved about how the local services are going to be shaped. In essence, it appears a perfectly reasonable proposal and even one which has been allegedly supported by a GP, Howard Stoates, also a former Labour Party member of Parliament. Mr Cameron used his reference to support his argument for NHS reforms, and this worked like a red rag for the Labour Party.
During the noisy war of words, Angela Eagle, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, corrected Mr Cameron about a factual error, and Mr Cameron is supposed to have then said in response “Calm down dear, calm down”. The response was swift and acrimonious.
Now for Indian readers, these might come as innocuous words. However, in the context of fraught British gender battles, this phrase appears patronising, and suddenly the whole debate in the media shifted from what Catherine Middleton was going to wear for the wedding to whether the Prime Minister is a closet sexist?
While the Labour front bench was up in arms (and they do have quite a few very vocal women shadow ministers) saying that no modern man would have used those words towards a woman, Downing Street was forced to issue a clarification stating that the words were taken from a “comic” advertisement for insurance a few years ago featuring Michael Winner.
However, to be fair to Mr Cameron, the annoying words do come from the highly-successful commercials, which were undoubtedly also very irritating from all accounts. But they worked very well as an ad campaign pulling in more than a million policies in four years for the insurance advertiser. Perhaps, it had a high recall value because it was so annoying! Certainly enough recall for the Mr Cameron to use the catchphrase “Calm down, dear, calm down” not just once but twice during his Prime Minister’s Questions defence. He had used it once before in 2007.
In fact, Mr Winner, the man in centre of the irksome ad campaign (which is no longer on air), is immensely pleased that Mr Cameron used his catch phrase and is wondering whether Britons have lost their sense of humour.
So now opinion is divided whether Mr Cameron was somehow showing his real colours by being “patronising” towards a woman member of the shadow front bench, or was he just genuinely trying to deflect the argument by using humour? In either case, Indian parliamentarians may take heart from the fact that the chamber became so overheated and noisy that the Speaker was forced to ask the members to quieten down, if not calm down.
Whilst Mr Cameron may have just been trying to get a laugh, it is important to remember that women parliamentarians and their supporters need to be vigilant about sexism because they have struggled hard to get their share of respect from their peers. It was not so long ago that they were barely able to register their presence in Parliament and the men even used to snigger when women got up to speak. Things have changed and strong women like Margaret Thatcher and now Harriet Harman from the Labour Party have ensured that men politicos give them equal status. Thus Mr Cameron, perhaps, needs to be more mindful when he speaks.
He should take a leaf about Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s book, who has been unceasingly courteous to his women colleagues. How can we forget that during one of the noisiest and most acrimonious debates over the recent scams, Dr Singh suddenly took the wind out of the Opposition sails by addressing Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj with the words of Allama Iqbal :
Mana ke tere deed ke qabil nahin hun main
Mera shaukh toh dekh, mera intezaar toh dekh….
(I accept that I may not be worthy in your eyes,
But, at least, appreciate my passion, and my patience)
In the midst of the pandemonium, it brought a moment of calm, without Dr Singh asking for it. Perhaps Dr Singh could give a few lessons to Mr Cameron on urdu poetry?

Meanwhile, while the world was betting on all kinds of things about the Will-Kat wedding I was most intrigued by the “balcony kiss”. This would have been Catherine’s most difficult moment: she has been an intensely private person so far. Thus, without betting on it, I wondered if this would be a diffident peck on the cheek, or a prolonged lip lock? Or would it be a joyous, whole hearted embrace, accompanied by an enormous sense of relief that now she was finally married to the man she had waited for nearly a decade? Given the kind of woman she is, I would have happily placed my bet on the last option.

Kishwar Desai can be contacted at kishwardesai@yahoo.com