In his time in office, Rishi Sunak has done much to popularise an intensifier favoured by men wanting to advertise their commitment to women’s interests while effacing any earlier indifference: “As a father of daughters.”

Without his in-house epiphanies, Sunak might never have understood, “as a father to daughters”, the need for girls to feel safe walking around in the evening or to be educated to the same extent as boys. Which is disturbing, but still. Better late, etc. His daughters are credited, too, in Sunak’s tribute to the Lionesses’ victories and with – “women’s rights are personal to me” – his appreciating the need for women’s single-sex spaces.

If depending on daughters for instruction in sex equality is less impressive than promoting it on principle, Sunak undeniably shines when compared with politicians who remain, even after being blessed with girls, in a state of nature. Donald Trump has daughters. Ditto Vladimir Putin. David Cameron, with two, maintained a primitive preference for male colleagues/banter. George Osborne’s daughter couldn’t inoculate him against airing psychopathic fantasies about Theresa May. That Boris Johnson was the parent as prime minister of two, then three girls, similarly confirms that hiring only men who have daughters cannot, sadly, be the solution to misogyny in Westminster, the City or the Metropolitan police.

Admittedly, since spawning another girl, Johnson has apologised to the female colleague known to his old WhatsApp pals as “that cunt”. Maybe in hardened cases you need a ratio of at least four daughters........

© The Guardian