It was political theatre to match the moment, a House love-in for its speaker and political icon as she exited centre stage.

Nancy Pelosi wore suffragette white for the big announcement, an occasion coloured by laughs, tears and standing ovation that felt like farewell to an era.

In stepping back from leadership, the first ever woman speaker leaves behind a legacy reflective of one of America’s sharpest political operators.

President Biden called her “the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history”.

He had reason to be thankful – Mrs Pelosi’s political nous and stewardship of a disparate grouping of House Democrats was pivotal in the achievements of his administration, so too Obama’s.

The 82-year-old mother of five, self-styled ‘homemaker to House speaker’ isn’t departing the scene completely.

She will remain in Congress as, no doubt, will her influence on a reshuffled Democrat deck.

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Her prominence and political activism extended to the international stage, famously upsetting the Chinese in 1991 when she unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square honouring demonstrators who had lost their lives.

Then again, in August of this year, when she visited Taiwan.

As one of America’s most recognisable politicians, she was revered on one side of a toxic divide – reviled on the other.

She became a focus of attacks by opponents and, shockingly, an intruder attacked her husband in their San Francisco home in October after demanding “where is Nancy?”

It carried sinister echoes of the mob that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021 and searched through offices and corridors for her.

If the politics of office were telling her it was time to step down, so – perhaps – was the baggage that comes with it.

The invective directed towards Mrs Pelosi was articulated by Donald Trump through his presidency and it continues to this day.

His was the name that wasn’t spoken, pointedly, in her House announcement.

In talking of work and achievement with presidents on her roster, she spoke warmly of Bush, Obama and Biden. No mention, naturally, of her nemesis.

The politician’s stepping back, not the politics.

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