If women weren't already put off a career in politics, the plight of Bodyguard's Julia Montague will certainly do it

If women needed any more reason to be put off politics, episode three of Bodyguard was probably it.

Tony Blair may have got away with the Iraq War, and David Cameron seems to be enjoying his holidays in France with his “trotters” up after the Brexit referendum, yet Bodyguard protagonist Julia Montague was subjected to an assassination attempt and then may have been killed by a bomb all because she voted for military action and then rejected one of her sleazy aide’s advances. (At the time of writing, this theory is one of several. Only show creator Jed Mercurio knows the rest.)

Bodyguard may be fiction, but its portrayed world of toxic masculinity, fragile egos and women wearing high heels from dawn until dusk is probably not that far off the mark. We don’t know if Montague, the fictional home secretary, is dead – apparently she might just be laying low until the finale – but in the real world, female heads do roll.

Amber Rudd, for example, resigned from the Home Office after failing to prevent or deal with the Windrush scandal, while male politicians who have arguably committed equally egregious acts have simply escaped through the revolving doors of a cabinet reshuffle. But fiction and reality doesn’t always line up, of course: Mercurio has hinted there is no such thing as a “can’t die” character, but in real life this theory only applies to men such as Boris Johnson.

Forgive me, but work-life balance does come into it. It’s terrible for men, and therefore it’s terrible for women – even more terrible as they are often (one might hesitate to say usually) the primary family caregivers. When I was lucky enough to have dinner in the canteen at Westminster a few years ago, I vividly remember having a chat with a female MP. She had three children and was waiting around for an evening vote, before a long drive home. I asked her how she managed. “Badly,” she said. Her husband had said it was either him or the career; she chose the latter. It perhaps goes some way to explaining why so many powerful women don’t have children, whether it be Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, Natalie Bennett or even the fictional Julia Montague.

If you do have a child in Westminster, good luck to you. Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson made national headlines this month when she brought her 11-week-old baby into the House of Commons. (Just imagine Jacob Rees-Mogg spouting his usual “Brexit is wonderful because we will all have cheaper clothes and shoes” rhetoric while bouncing Sixtus on his lap). And when Swinson was on maternity leave, she was cheated out of a cross-party pact when her Tory counterpart voted in a debate instead of sitting out until she got back to work. Never mind the stories from “Pestminster” – allegations from women politicians, aides and support staff of routine sexual discrimination, harassment and even rape.

We have record breaking numbers of women MPs being elected in 2017, yet they only make up 32 per cent overall. The Centenary Action Group has called today for the government to enforce Section 106 of the Equality Act, which would require political parties to publish the gender breakdown of their parliamentary candidates.

Becoming a councillor, or an MP, is a hard slog. As I found out at a Parliament Project event in London, attended by Tory MP Heidi Allen and designed to encourage women to run for public office, it requires money – and if you don’t have money, you will need to break your back door-knocking and dragging your friends and family out to help you at every God-given hour until election day. Once you are elected, you will be lucky if you have one full day off a week. Part time work or job shares are not common; Caroline Lucas is the only senior name to take up a job share as former Green Party co-leader.

So, allow me to tie this up neatly and come back to Bodyguard, the teller of all truths. Whether Montague is dead or alive, she was always a pawn in a game which was stacked against her. She could never have run from a sniper attack in high heels, and the one man designed to protect her crumbled at the first opportunity. She was ambitious, and her colleagues colluded to cut her down. She never had a chance.