There are some things only a woman can do

Mak

Harman is yet another ghastly face of the Labour medusa, and not a very competant one at that.

Polly's mum

Who is the nasty party now?
Yes, please, can we have Harriet Harperson as the new Dear Leader. She would be forced to have an election, and then this would all be over. AND we would still have a chance to have our referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

CS

Speaks volumes about her attitude to men if she's only ever met ones who dump her instantly.

So the real question is: does HH have a bad attitude towards men because they keep dumping her or does she keep getting dumped because she has a bad attitude towards men?

Mike. Brighton

If they think personalised attacks which are as cynical as hypocritical will work then I'm a banana.
Desperate stuff from New Labour and very high risk as Harperson assumes the electorate is making a mistake about the Tories.
What next?
Brown's mum being interviewed about what a great son Gordon is? Sarah Brown describing 5-times-a-night Gordon?

They are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this, if the polls don't move things are going to get really bad for Brown.

George

Wrong headline. There are only some things this woman can do: alienate half the electorate at a stroke.

Men are fed up to the back teeth with man haters and she comes top of the pile. You have to laugh at Labour thinking she's an asset!

Liz Brown

She is utterly poisonous and I hope that the conservatives will remove their kid gloves when it comes to returning the favour

C Powell

She's misjudged how women react to Cameron. HH herself is the sort of woman who other women - normal ones, that is, not Labour "wimmin" and men loathe: self-righteous, hectoring and nannying - and no fun at all.

Going for personal attacks will simply confirm to the wider electorate that Labour are empty of ideas.

mac

Well of course it was personal and unpleasant. This was the sneering, small-minded Ms Harman, sister superior, bearer of a mighty chip on her shoulder and equality zealot.

But no worries here; without a prepared and rehearsed speaking note Cameron will highlight her inadequacy if she makes it to the despatch box as PM. I hope she is what the unions wish for to replace Brown; the election outcome with her as Labour leader will be oblivion.

CS

And, James, on what possible basis do you wonder if it might well be effective? If Cameron were a Steven Norris shagger type then it might stick. But one undoubted that the pblic has of Cameron (whatever their view of his politics) is that of being a happily married man.

Harman's entire basis for the analogy with an unfaithful partner is that Cameron is a man. He's untrustworthy, you see, because he's a man.

I suppose that 11 years in the political wilderness might have induced an inferiority complex on Coffee Housers but is there any chance that we could get away from this kneejerk reaction that every new idea from this Government is a potential danger for the Tories?

Brown brings in Carter and his mob of PR shysters to Downing Street to improve government and the people writing on Coffee House portray it as a devastatingly clever strategy by Brown that could turn the tide. It all ends hilariously.

Brown announces relaunch Number 43 then 44 then 45 and each time Coffee House ignores the way Brown's last brainwave flopped and foretells imminent danger for the Tories. Relaunch Number 43 and 44 and 45 end in ignominy.

So, do the grey cells of certan commentators on Coffee House start to twitch? No, along comes Relaunch Number 46 and we get predictions of danger all over again. Talk about a slow learning curve.

I suppose that a slow learning curve or an inferiority complex are the charitable explanations. Less charitable would be the suggestion that the slightest political non-story gets inflated into a three act melodrama to fill empty space and to justify some people's existence as opinion holders/formers.

You lot are lucky that anyone still pays any attention to you given how many of you heralded Brown's elevation to PM as the triumph of a genius of political strategy who would consign the Tories to outer darkness by the sheer power of his brain.

Whatever you may think of them, it's one mistake that Cameron & Co never made. They worked from the start on the presumption that Brown would be a disaster as PM and were proved right amid the crashing reputations of Fleet Street's finest opinion formers on the subject.

David C

This is Harriet Harman we're talking about.
She long ago recognised that this sort of stuff resonated within a section of the Labour Party and has made this particular brand of politics her own.
Did anybody expect anything different?

Tiberius

I don't think many people, men or women, would recognize this attack as feminised.

Juvenile, angst-ridden, and nauseating are just three of the more apt descriptions.

Max Kaye

By Jove she's ghastly.

dennis

She is far posher than cameron or,indeed, virtually anybody

Tiberius

CS: there is a lot of truth in what you say. I have had faith in Cameron's capability since his 2005 conference speech, but I cannot forget that the great British public (as Ant and Dec like to call us) gave landslides to a party that never had a claim to them.

I only hope the price of such indulgence has now hit home to voters.

TrevorsDen

Labour are thick, sick and disgusting.

cityboozer

Really you are just angry because she said that the Tories' house magazine is the Tatler though!

Oscar

Harman's nasty little speech for the party faithful won't travel beyond the conference hall. But you have to wonder how this bitter feminist copes with the Brown camp who come across as unreconstructed macho misogynists. It's notable that Sarah is hailed as a wonderful woman because (unlike Cherie) she dutifully plays the role of subservient wife to perfection - ditching her own career and devoting herself to hubby. How does that play with Harpie Harman?

John Miller

Well, I can entirely understand her attitude married, as she is (are they back together again?), to Jack Dromey.

The bastard who poked her eyes out before he made her sign all the forms...

Bruce. UK

"There are some things only a twit* can do".

* This word may be misspelt.

Austin Barry

I'm convinced that it's harridans like Harman who, as a kind of female aversion therapy, cause impressionable and wan young Englishmen to believe that homosexuality is a preferable alternative. Were this harpie ever to be become Prime Minister I would fear for the continuation of the bulldog breed.

David Lindsay

Dennis, I have a feeling that she and Cameron are related: Cameron is related to the Mounts, the Mounts are related to the (Longford) Packenhams, and the (Longford) Packenhams are related to Hatty.

Meanwhile, to matters historical, yet very contemporary: the old Paedophile Information Exchange was hand in glove with the old Campaign for Homosexual Equality (they were practically a single organisation - same address, same committee, the works), which in turn was hand in glove with the old National Council for Civil Liberties in the Hatty and Patty days.

(Patty, please note, is now a key anti-Brown conspirator, having previously had overall responsibility for every social worker in England.)

This is all very well-researched and well-documented; indeed, so different were attitudes within the real ruling class at the time (I mean to publicising these views, not to the views as such, which have not changed one jot) that no secret seems to have been made of these connections.

The people who have done all the relevant (painstaking) research have of course been short of a hearing in more recent years. But with Hatty's new-found eminence, they are certainly going to get a hearing now.

Aren't they?

Benjamin Gray

This brand of personal attack worked really well for Labour in Crewe and Nantwich.

If all they can resort to are narrow personal attacks after over ten years in government then it's clear that they have run out of ideas.

Chris Gudgin

James,
How is it ok for the Conservative party to release an entire booklet to the public mocking Brown's character (at his year anniversary) but a few personal lines in speeches at the Labour party conference (where you'd expect this kind of thing- let's see what the Tories say
next week) is 'taking the low road'?!!

Marian C

She's nothing more than a toxic old hag,

“ He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about. You know the kind of man I'm talking about. He'll promise you the world. Promise to make all your dreams come true. But if he got his wicked way with - you in the ballot box - you'd never hear from him again”

what a load of old cobblers; I’m surprised she can remember that far back to what her mother told her; maybe she’s still living in hope, silly old trout.

Nicholas

This woman is a disgrace. Her sexist and hate-filled crusade against married men should be the subject of a criminal complaint.

Her infuriating smugness will make her "Portillo moment" one of the great joys of 2010 - or sooner.

Verity

Harman's even more stupid than she looks; and that's going it some ...

Re Cameron, her speech " assumes that Cameron is the kind of man who’ll say anything to have his ‘wicked way’."

You mean Harmon's heard Cameron saying something? Does she hear voices?

The rest of the British electorate has never heard Cameron saying a bleeding word. No one has any idea what he stands for on any particular day. He appears to travel light, never having packed his principles into a travelling bag to unfold for the electorate.

If Harriet Harpic knows what David Cameron believes, she is ahead of 99.9999% of the British electorate.

Is anyone really going to vote for this individual, based on vapid looks and a brain to match?

Edward McLaughlin

Politics aside, I think that for 58 she has kept herself very tidy.