Melissa Kite
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But behind the scenes at that conference, women ministers were telling another story. The barely concealed despair of one female member of the government at Brown’s relentlessly dour philosophy on life tumbled out during a private dinner in a conference hotel. ‘Gordon just doesn’t understand why anyone would want to spend money on a handbag,’ she lamented, clutching her designer briefcase protectively close to her chair. While Tony Blair had been in tune with the hopes and dreams of women, and not averse to a bit of retail therapy himself, Gordon was on a mission to crush frivolity. If he could have slapped a tax on Selfridges just for existing, he would have, the minister said.
Then there was the way he acted around women. While Tony had been all fun and flirty, not only at ease with women but actually preferring their company to that of men, making small talk with Gordon was like wading through treacle. He treated women ministers with old-fashioned deference, as if they were separate and a bit fragile, and required extra politeness. Instead of flirting — which let’s face it, even John Major managed — Gordon gave every impression of being a bit afraid of women (perhaps he knew what was coming).
Of course his Presbyterian manners should not matter in themselves. But there was evidence of a more serious bias against women in his managerial style. In his first reshuffle, the undeniably clever Yvette Cooper and the veteran minister Tessa Jowell were only ‘allowed to attend’ Cabinet, rather than being full Cabinet members.
Harriet Harman was not made deputy Prime Minister, as it was felt would have happened if one of her male rivals had won through. Instead she was lumbered with a plethora of less important titles: Deputy Leader, Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality. It was as if Mr Brown were dumping a heap of washing and ironing on her desk and saying: ‘Can you sort this lot out, please.’
By contrast, the beer-swilling blokes had their fingers on the button and were out of control. Testosterone-fuelled briefings and horseplay abounded, until a Tory blogger called time on happy hour inside the Downing Street den when he got hold of emails between Brown’s aide Damian McBride and Derek Draper, in which they raucously discussed smearing senior Tories with tasteless innuendo about their sex lives. Women ministers were appalled with the way Brown’s allies were carrying on. ‘It’s disgusting,’ said one. ‘It’s the ghastly macho culture in there. It’s all willy-waving.’
Let’s be clear. No leader, however confident or macho, should upset the girls. There is much evidence that when a party chief is marked out for death, it is the women who wield the knife. In 2003, the entire might of the Conservative party was despairing of Iain Duncan Smith, but it was a quiet, pencil-slim diary secretary called Vanessa Gearson who made the fatal allegations, since disproved, about money he paid his wife Betsy to work in his office, triggering a furore which ended in the Quiet Man being noisily slaughtered.
In 2006 the Liberal Democrats were panic-stricken at Charles Kennedy’s deterioration, but while many senior figures briefed behind the scenes, it was the 4ft 10in Sarah Teather who organised a letter urging him to go. It is a tabloid headline cliché, but the assassins so often wear high heels. Like Judith beheading Holofernes, they do not seem to mind rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in.
Fast-forward to 2009, and the Labour party is vibrating with impatience at the performance of Gordon Brown. Off the record, there is savage briefing by male Labour MPs. But who should go over the top? Why, none other than Jacqui Smith and the little chipmunk lady, Hazel Blears.
For a second it looks as though a few of the blokes might join in. James Purnell sticks his head above the parapet and growls a bit but no one dare follow. David Miliband and Alan Johnson yelp helplessly and the revolt looks dead. Then the raven-haired Xena warrior princess of the party, Caroline Flint, hurtles across the battlefield with a spear aimed at Gordon’s head.
Of course her attack on Mr Brown was ethically ridiculous. Anyone who pours themselves into a scarlet satin dress and extreme heels for a photo shoot is on a sticky wicket in complaining about their boss using them for ‘window-dressing’. But no matter. She had at least gone down fighting when the massed ranks of male Labour MPs cowered behind her, blubbing about how Brown might hurt them.
After the cashmere coup of last year, when Siobhain McDonagh and others called for ballot papers, and now the revenge of the Wags, or Women Against Gordon, Mr Brown will surely be learning something.
In his speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party meeting on Monday night — ‘I have my weaknesses. I know I need to improve. I know I’ve got to keep learning’ — the Prime Minister did sound as though he were standing on the doorstep begging for one last chance after a fraught domestic row.
Behind the scenes, it was said, the rebels had been ‘terrorised’ into submission, the silence of previously vocal MPs was deafening. It was a female minister again who dared to try to reignite the plot as it fizzled in another outbreak of male squeamishness. Refusing to swear an oath of loyalty demanded by Downing Street, Jane Kennedy, the farming minister, urged colleagues to oust Mr Brown.
Perhaps it is a very modern phenomenon, or perhaps it has always been like this. It is the equivalent of the exasperated wife pushing her husband aside as he tries to shoo a dying bee out of the kitchen. ‘Oh for goodness sake, let me sort it out,’ she sighs as she squashes the poor creature with the flick of a tea towel before explaining that sometimes it’s kinder that way.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph and contributing editor of The Spectator.
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