How dare she! Flaunting her gargantuan thighs and great big hippo belly on a Cornish beach like that – just asking for a paparazzo to snap the cellulite. Doesn’t she realise that for every catering pack of Belgian brownies she guzzles, at least five Surrey schoolgirls called Annabel starve themselves to death? And the selfish lard-arse is wheezing cholesterol and saturated fat all over her own poor kiddies. If there’s one way in which the leaders of Germany’s centre-left parties resemble other men, it’s in preferring younger women: Doris (19 years younger than Schr?) and Nicola Leske (21 years younger than her now ex-husband Fischer).Sadly, women can on occasion be as harsh towards members of their own sex as any man. Doris Schr?-Kopf’s attack on Angela Merkel may not sway the German election. But it doesn’t say much for her husband’s radical credentials if he thinks the only way he can win is by encouraging his wife to make misogynist remarks about another woman
More from Joan Smith.

At this point, I felt like giving a heartfelt sigh and asking who ever imagined that the soixante-huit generation of Left politicians was any less sexist than its predecessors? That’s how we came to have feminism in the first place, although it would be nice to think that Doris Schr?-Kopf grew up in slightly more enlightened times. Then Schr?-Kopf started talking about childbirth, bringing up children and education in case anyone failed to grasp what she was implying about her husband’s rival. (Personally, whenever anyone starts suggesting I know nothing about children, I point out that I was a child for quite a long time.)Far from being embarrassed, Schr? joined in, insisting on his wife’s right to express her opinions and making a point of mentioning the SPD’s family-friendly policies. I can’t say I like Merkel’s politics but of all the things Doris Schr?-Kopf could have thrown at her, she chose to go for the nasty, low and personal, observing that the leader of the right-wing alliance “does not embody with her biography the experiences of most women”.

They have a point about the health risks to both mother and child of delaying pregnancy until the late thirties, but was it really necessary to talk about women “defying nature and risking heartbreak”? I was reminded of the leading British biologist who was outraged to discover at a rather grand party that I didn’t intend to have children. “You’re evading your biological destiny,” he shrieked, glancing wildly around the room as though I was about to escape through a fifth-floor window. Telling him how relaxed I felt about defying destiny and sexist assumptions didn’t calm him down at all.What I’ve come to realise is that women are always in the wrong when it comes to fertility, having children too young, too late or (as in mine and Angela Merkel’s case) not at all. Not only female politicians, either, for ordinary women in the UK have just been warned by doctors about an “epidemic” of middle-aged pregnancy. Yes, that’s “epidemic” as in “a widespread occurrence of a disease” or “a wide prevalence of something usually undesirable”, according to the dictionary, which is hardly calculated to make middle-aged mothers feel terrific.
The authors of the research, two of whom are women, went out of their way to put the blame on “a distorted and uninformed view from society, employers and health planners”, apparently without realising how loaded their own vocabulary was. I mean, four wives and no children (unless you count the Russian orphan he adopted two years ago with his current spouse, Doris Schr?-Kopf)? As for his deputy in the outgoing coalition, the Green leader Joschka Fischer, whose most recent divorce two years ago was his fourth – are these guys with their atypical emotional histories really fit to run a country?

Before you conclude that I’ve taken leave of my senses, all I’m doing is subjecting the centre-left’s leading figures to the kind of scrutiny their female challenger has been under during the last week, ever since Doris Schr?-Kopf chose to make the private life of Angela Merkel – who has been married twice and has no children – an issue. I’m worried about Gerhard Schr?, who seems to have been enjoying a late surge in the run-up to today’s German election.

I know the former Young Socialist refused to take part in the Iraq war but I can’t help noticing that his biography does not – how can I put this tactfully? – embody the experiences of most men. MPs should choose party leaders: anything else is either manoeuvring for the advantage of one candidate or another, or it is public relations The Conservatives should vote to let the MPs decide. That they seem bent on keeping the mad Hague rules is the worst possible start for the new parliament
More from John Rentoul. The Smith reform was an attempt partially to undo the damage of that decision. It was part of a necessary, titanic and symbolic struggle to separate Labour from the trade unions. That was done by giving the vote to individual union members, which had the presentational advantage of looking a bit like an American primary But it is indefensible in a parliamentary democracy.

The point about party leaders is that they have to have the support of their MPs – ultimately as prime minister they have to command the confidence of the House of Commons.Yet there are members of the Shadow Cabinet who seriously propose copying Labour’s original mistake with an electoral college of their own, with half the votes held by MPs and half by party members It is all nonsense. William Hague made a strategic error of historic proportions when he changed the Tory party’s rules in 1997. Perhaps he was trying to protect himself from imagined plots by supporters of Michael Portillo, or perhaps to copy Labour’s success in presenting itself as more “democratic” when John Smith broke with the trade union block vote in 1993. The Labour Party introduced an electoral college in 1981 because the party in the country wanted to force its choice on a parliamentary party it could no longer trust. Will Brown decide who he wants and then ask the college to vote for a joint ticket, as John Smith did with Margaret Beckett in 1992? Or will he hedge and edge, as Tony Blair did with John Prescott in 1994, staying above the fray until it was clear who was winning? Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Trade, is favourite in the second scenario, but would Brown want to pre-empt him by choosing someone who poses less of a threat to his own position?All grist to the mill of speculation, but there is an important issue underlying the debate in all three parties.