Being the best is about skill, not about gender

Celia Walden

Sherrock has been quick to shrug off a feminist label that seemed superfluous

Now for a Christmas micro-quiz. Who can the following quote be attributed to? “My son is going to grow up looking at the newspaper cuttings and thinking, ‘Wow, my mum did this’”. Was it a) Rebecca Long-bailey, the Labour leadership front-runner, who would be the first female leader of the party if voted in early next year, or b) Fallon Sherrock, the 25-year-old former hairdresser who made history last week by becoming the first female darts player to beat a man at the World Darts Championship?

It was, of course, Sherrock, below, the petite mother-of-one who first destroyed some geezer named “Super” Ted Evetts on Tuesday, and followed it up with a second victory on Saturday night, further making history by being the first person to make me watch a game of darts from start to tubthumping, man-annihilating finish – and the first (and last) to make me whoop the words: “You go girl!” Which incidentally sounded even worse in my mouth than they look here on the page.

Now, I’m not about to become a darts fan. It brings me out in hives just looking at all that polyester, which is presumably the only reason darts players sweat as excessively as they do. After all, they’re scarcely moving, and this must be the only sport aside from snooker that can be played while sinking half a dozen pints of John Smith’s and chugging your way through a pack of B&H. But as I watched this defiantly dry-pitted and slightly schoolmistressy blonde purse her lips and narrow her eyes in sniper-like focus, it hit me that this – she – was the definition of equality. As Sherrock takes aim, she’s not thinking about her sex or being the first woman, she’s zero-ing in on that bullseye.

Hers is the kind of cool confidence you want in a party leader. But Jo Swinson didn’t have it and neither does Rebecca Long-bailey: both over-promoted because of their sex. Will we ever be allowed to forget how “trailblazing” the six female Labour leadership hopefuls are simply because they’re female? And yet, whereas all of their interviews and statements will doubtless be peppered with talk of “progressive politics”, being the only woman in a maledominated world, and reminders of other slights and stigmas suffered, Sherrock has refused to use either her autistic son, Rory, or the kidney issue she has battled for five years to boost her cause – and she has been quick to shrug off a feminist label that seemed superfluous. “I don’t even know what a feminist is,” she said, when “go-girled” on Twitter by Billie Jean King, who declared her the great new feminist icon of world sport – “#Gamechanger.”

Isn’t feminism and our greatest hope for equality in 2020 being the best at what you do… oh, and a woman? Becoming the first woman to win the gruelling 268-mile Montane Spine Race along the Pennine Way, like British ultrarunner Jasmin Paris did in January, pausing only to express breast milk for her baby at aid stations en route? Isn’t it about writing hilarious Bafta-winning social commentaries, like Phoebe Waller-bridge, and using your unrelenting determination to inspire and innovate another predominantly male industry, like Dr Maggie Aderin-pocock, the author, TV presenter and space scientist?

Isn’t it founding life-changing humanitarian enterprises like Cando, the brainchild of Dr Rola Hallam, a British-syrian consultant anaesthetist who this year managed to leverage the power of crowdfunding to provide healthcare to countries in need?

I doubt any of those women of 2019 have wasted much time embracing the feminist marketing brand that Labour has so cynically decided is the only way to win. God knows the other brand John Mcdonnell’s favourite has embraced – that of being “Corbyn’s natural successor” – is unlikely to be a boon. And why Long-bailey would align herself with something so tainted by failure is baffling. You don’t promote a new travel company with the words: “Thomas Cook-endorsed”, do you?

And yet, when Mcdonnell insists that “whoever comes after Jeremy has got to be a woman”, he ironically runs the risk of reinforcing sexism and misogyny within the party and the public by electing a female leader who isn’t up to the job.

It’s not ovaries that make us winners, but being better – and indeed the best.