Results tagged “Caroline Flint” from Liverpool Daily Post - Outside The Bubble
As I bloke, if I suggest that all women selection lists for parliamentary candidates in constituencies are a foolish idea, I run the risk of being called sexist.
But what if an audience of, say, 200 women, attending a political discussion saved one of their loudest rounds of applause for a statement from a woman who said: "I'd rather a woman was selected on her own merits, regardless of whether or not her rivals were male or female."?
That's what happened during Question Time last night, which was in front of a female-only audience to mark International Womens' Week. I didn't take a shorthand note of the statement mentioned in the paragraph above, but that's the gist of what she said.
The problem about taking a stand against the self-made perception that you are window dressing is that, as a result, you find yourself at the back of the shop.
And that's where Caroline Flint finds herself, several weeks after her hissy fit over not getting the promotion she felt she deserved into the main cabinet.
In her world, she seemingly felt she was ready for a bigger job. Gordon Brown disagreed, and in a moment of unusual clear thought, decided to risk the storm of a strong decision and not promote her.
Bloody hell. With the bullets reigning down left, right and centre, it appears Gordon Brown has got something right.
Despite the ministers going left, right and centre, he still didn't see a full cabinet role for Caroline Flint, who shares many of the annoying traits which Hazel Blears has - an awful fixed smile, a voice which cuts glass and only gets higher when she doesn't get her own way and an inability to understand that other people may disagree with her.
And given her response to that decision, it appears he made the right one.
Last night, Caroline Flint said: "I am staying in the government.
"I have spent my entire ministerial career for six years now serving Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and I am very proud to be in a Labour government and very proud to be part of Gordon Brown's government."
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David Higgerson - David Higgerson has covered local and national politics for much of his career as a journalist. This blog aims to look at Westminister from the outside in, at a time when it appears very few are looking out from the inside.
