IT'S not that she doesn't have form. The author of Ugenia Lavender and the Burning Pants is back and her pronouncements are just as big and baffling as before.

To widespread delight, the Spice Girls have united - all but one - to play a UK tour next year and lo! the ladies have been invited to muse on current events to whet appetites ahead of the performances to come.

Sporty, Baby, Posh, Ginger and Scary were the gateway to feminism for countless tweens and teens and now, 20 years later, they're still talking about women's rights.

Sort of. The Spice Girls' approach to feminism was always at pains to be palatable but it doesn't do to overthink them, for one's own equilibrium.

Carrying on the tradition, Emma Bunton says the band is, rather than all about Girl Power, now about "people power."

Opining on the most serious situation Britain has faced in my lifetime, the Spice Girls are calling for unity. "We’re about equality and bringing everyone together,” she says. And thus, the band is concerned about Brexit. Fortunately, Ms Horner, using the skills honed during her 10-plus years as international ambassador for the UN's population fund, is on hand to help out.

"Britain," she says, digging out a replica Union flag dress and standing tall, "Come together, whatever it is. We don’t have to agree on politics, it’s bigger than that.

"You can just support a woman doing the best she can and that’s it. Not an easy position."

It's not an easy position, Geri, is it. Nor a position entirely without its problems.

Horner is somewhat famed for her admiration of Britain's first female Prime Minister, "the first Spice Girl, the pioneer of our ideology". There is much about the Spice Girls message that is conservative: individualism not co-operation; a focus on making money; pro-British, anti-EU; the pursuit of capitalism.

At the death of Margaret Thatcher, Horner tweeted in her praise, was lambasted and deleted the tweet. She later publicly chided herself for doing so, saying she had failed to show the same strength of character as her heroine.

Unlike Mrs Thatcher, the lady was - altogether now - for turning.

Ms Horner's latest trite pseudo-profound warbling is that high-achieving women are automatically positive role models, regardless of the impact of their achievements on women collectively. But not all female success is by default feminist.

It's the logic supporting former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's famous "there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women." I see Ms Albright's stance and raise her Katie Hopkins.

The logical end to that would be that I am compelled to support the Janus-faced Horner - she who has both pinched the bum of Prince Charles (Happy Birthday, sir) and acted as UN Goodwill Ambassador - and I'm afraid I do not.

Mrs Albright used her catchphrase in relation to Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton during the US elections of 2016.

Mrs Clinton herself refused to heed this advice when she criticised Monica Lewinsky recently, denying her husband's affair while in office constituted an abuse of power. An intern, lest we need reminded, and the President of the United States.

Mrs Clinton also chose to back the incumbent Andrew M Cuomo over his challenger Cynthia Nixon in New York’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. What would Ms Horner make of it all?

In a way, she is correct. Feminism is an obligation to support and help other women. It is a willingness to lift other women up, mentor women, promote them, even if it means putting oneself out.

It is not, though, a case of unquestioningly promoting other women at any cost.

It is desperately patronising to suggest that the simple fact of being female is a bridge that should cross any political divisions, any ideological divide, between women. It does, in fact, do far more harm to not contest or contradict women who are doing great damage to other women.

The Spice Girls turned heads for being unabashedly bombastic. Mel B once compared the band's musical petition for girl power with Nelson Mandela's decades-long anti-apartheid fight. What's the opposite of imposter syndrome?

Tthe band's great power came from their insistence of friendships taking priority over romantic relationships.

During the interview praising Theresa May, Melanie C chips in to compliment the politician's dance techniques. This is a position I can back. There was a distinct whiff of bullying in the response to the Prime Minister's attempts to move to the music. We all cringed but they who who wouldn't cut some mad shapes while under pressure to be rhythmic may cast the first stone.

The message of friendship is perhaps one Ms Horner could apply to her relationship with the questionable Mrs May. Harriet Harman's verdict on Mrs May was that, "She's a woman - but no sister."

It is possible to be friends and disagree, it is possible to be sisters and disagree. We can, say, vehemently oppose a woman's politics while not mocking her dancing.

A woman in power is not necessarily a positive force and it is distinctly unfeminist to suggest women shouldn't speak out to say so.