Flint tells Brown, don't sack Blears

Dave

Bit of topic but have heard a couple of labour supporters on the radio going down the same route as brown "it would be chaos to have a Tory government" and they are starting to suggest a coalition of all party’s in these dark economic times, does this say more about labour running scared or that brown will cling onto power at whatever cost even declaring a state of financial emergency so he doesn’t have to fight an election ?

Tiberius

Brown might indeed find that taking on a sisterhood is a whole new ball game to flattening Labour men of a yellow tinge.

What a pairing Flint and Blears would make. Every Coffee Houser's bit of rough and an irrepressible red-head.

Go ahead, Gordon - make our day.

Steve.W

JF – You say “Blears who has copped most of the flak from the media” this may be so. Blears may be no worse in flipping that other MPs but she is according to Simon Hoggart “a beacon of self satisfaction”. I think the anger of the public is not founded in logic but in loathing, they want both the smug and the greedy to go. I see you have selected an unflattering picture of Flint, she's another, the PM, Mr McEyebags,should sack them both!

oldtimer

Blears` departure will no more be the cabinet`s scapegoat than Martin`s sacking is Parliament`s scapegoat.

Public opinion requires a general election so that each MP, inside the cabinet or without and of whatever party, is personally held to account. Nothing else will do.

Labour isn't working...again

Never thought I could fancy a Labour MP...hell its the party that gave us Margaret (look out Sigourney Weaver) Beckett, Jacqui (Juggernaut) Smith, Barbara (pocket hitler) Castle, Hazel (Squirrel Nutty) Blears and my personal 'favourite' Ruth (Sorry, you sound like my dad) Kelly!

Oor Wullie

If Brown removes Blears and leaves the others alone the illogicality of his position will be emphasised, and he will come under increasing pressure to remove the others as well. He just doesn't get the mood of the country at the moment, and his judgement is seriously flawed on a range of issues (Gurkhas, General Election etc).
To be seen to be taking action RELUCTANTLY is even more damaging for Brown.

MikeF

Nor will Gordon Brown's authority be enhanced if he is seen to defer to the strictures of a nonentity like Caroline Flint. This country will only once again have a Prime Minister with any credibility after a General Election.

badman

Gordon Brown is particularly unpopular with women. Jacqui Smith is a goner, and Ruth Kelly has been McBrided out already, so Gordon Brown can't get rid of Blears and keep Hoon without reinforcing his "boys club" image. Leaks suggest that he thinks bringing back Margaret Beckett is the answer but, after her Question Time massacre, he's obviously wrong about that.

David

I'm not sure. Based on news programmes over the last couple of days, it's the Tories bearing the brunt. Duck islands and moats have become the shorthand for the scandal, and there appears to be no scrutiny of the behaviour of people like Blears. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if polling worsened considerably for the Conservatives, possibly irreversibly.

Dan Brusca

Flint's actual quote was:

"I think she’s doing a good job and she should continue to do that."

...which isn't the same as saying Brown shouldn't sack her. There's a danger of reading too much into quotes like this.

However, Flint deserves a great deal of attention. She's emerged largely unscathed from the expenses scandal and if Blears and Smith are defenestrated in the next reshuffle, Brown will look to bring at least one woman into Cabinet to make up the numbers. Hell, as Europe Minister she's often there anyway, so he may as well make it official.

I think that if Labour hangs on for another year, it's highly likely that Flint will emerge as a dark-horse leadership contender. She isn't saddled with factional baggage like Balls or David Milliand and if Labour think it's time for a female leader, Flint would be infinitely preferable to the electorate than Harman.

EyeSee

Since May 1997 New Labour have just moved morons around. Which one of them has the faintest grip on what they are OVERPAID to deliver? Apart from Frank Field. Caroline Flint throws a hug around..blah blah blah. Really, who cares? Clearly, after seeing people applauding the mention of Gordon Brown on Question Time in Dunfermline, universal suffrage is a bad idea. New Labour are much closer to a continental fascist party than anything British, or remotely 'socialist'. There are signs that Brown, for instance, feels that he should stay in power indefinitely, certainly he feels there should be no election, ever. The corruption exposed, now has MP's squealing like stuck pigs and is the absolutely inevitable outcome of the New Labour project as designed by Mandelson, enacted by Blair with his henchman Campbell (a clear Goerbals character). Blair ran roughshod offer parliament, the law and decency. He led a campaign to make people selfish and preening (so his deficiencies wouldn't stand out) and his silent disease, the Chancellor enacted class hate (much nicer than race hate and so essential) by pumping money into madcap, constantly changing schemes. His corrosive cancer has left no part of our society unaffected. We used to see a redirection of ideology when a government changed, but now we need to see financial competence, leadership, deletion of sackloads of laws, revision of health, education, policing, civil service, military, every aspect of political interference. Don't get me wrong, David Cameron currently shows every sign that he would love to be Blair II. The clue is in the title David, Conservative. Maybe he could read a book about when Conservatives could be relied upon to have values that affected every strata of British society in a positive way and allowed Britons to hold their heads high around the world. Otherwise a parliament of Independents would the best way to serve the people right now.

Publius

@ David.
You are wrong. Labour will suffer worse than the Tories over this expenses fuss. Why? Because Labour set themselves up as the great hyper-controlling holier-than-thou moralists on a crusade for "social justice".

Furthermore, Labour have abandoned their traditional heartland of salt-of-the-earth artisans in favour of sophisticated metropolitan Guardianista luvvies. The BNP message resonates more with the old Labour constituency now, who feel they have been abandoned.

mitch

I don't think gordon would survive the chipmunks speech if he sacked her....a few closet related comments and he is toast.

Verity

Tiberius "Blears is an irrepressible redhead". Yeah. Right, girls, eh?

Badman - You are tone deaf as far as women are concerned. "The sisterhood" is a figment of the fevered imagination of socialist women. And even then, I would guess only a very specific cadre of socialist women. "Sisterhood" sprang from the opportunistic imaginations of Gloria Steinhem, Betty Friedan and their ilk, and never really caught on in Britain. Come to think of it, it didn't catch in the US, either.

Trevorsden

Labour? £18,000 in unreceipted food costs for chief whip Nick Brown. beats a duck pond hands down.

Polls seem to support Cameron more than Brown.

And I have to say I get really fed up at the constant repeated rubbish about Cameron being Blair 2.

We should have a late Sept early Oct election and the Conservatives should insist that all candidates face reselection - with a number being definitely deselected.

Nicholas

"Every Coffee Houser's bit of rough"

Not this Coffee Houser's bit of rough Tiberius. I can't stand the woman and she represents everything I detest about Labour, Labour wimmin and Labour local government. A gobby, opinionated, arrogant cow with a large socialist chip on each shoulder and an axe to grind who shouts down dissent with a rat trap mouth and fog horn voice. Horrible. You can see them in every council office and every comprehensive staff room across the land - predatory females with the glint of the insane zealot in their eyes and whose mission in life is to stamp out masculinity in the Briton and make us feel abject guilt for every tiny shred of our glorious, masculine, military past.

Not Quite Hayek

It's disappointing that Flint is what counts for 'totty' in British politics.

If we're going to be patronised and lied to, I'd rather it was from Berlusconi's entourage. At least then it would give us something to think about when we're exposed to wall-to-wall coverage of politicians' antics...

Dorothy Wilson

Surely all this does is illustrate Brown's weaknesses. In business any manager worth his salt is able to control his team. Brown clearly cannot do so.

And I do wish someone would wipe that self-satisfied smirk off Blears face. The same goes for Flint.

Fergus Pickering

Are you telling me, Steve W, that Hazel Blears is a less attractive figure than Geoff Hoon, that anybody, except perhaps fat Balls, is a less attractive figure than Geoff Hoon. Good God, man, is there any shit that man will not eat? At least Happy Hazel stuck it to McBroon. Also Hoon has more houses. Four isn't it? He can get himself a hotel - a bordello no doubt.

mac

For years I thought that Hoon was a bland, untalented, overpromoted nonentity.

It turns that he is a bland, untalented, overpromoted nonentity who has spent a great deal of taxpayers money assembling a sizeable property portfolio and, inexplicably, has now received Brown's absolution.

Please, let this blow up in their faces soon . . .

Verity

What Nicholas said. Socialist women are ambulatory toxins.

BTW, what happened to those dramatic Labourite MPs who were under "suicide watch"? Did they start feeling a bit better?

Ben Elford

In a highly competitive field, Caroline 'Issues Around' Flint just edges ahead as the most annoying female in government.

One consolation in the present depressing circumstances is that we should be hearing much less from her very soon.

Verity

When the Tories get back in - and the Labour Party is laid low for the following 25 years - in the next election but one, I suggest that a way be found to send every socialist woman to re-education camps, or, to use their own terminology "diversity training facilities" and have communitarianism/Trotskyism/Marxism/Gramscism sluiced out of their heads.

Schools should also be involved in this project, with children being brought up to understand the malevolence of socialism and this shameful Blairite/ZanuLabour episode in our history.

This can happen only after we have beaten both the Blairites and the Heirites (an encouragingly small group) and Britain rids itself of the despotic shackles of the EUSSR.

If we have to belong to any large block, let it be the liberty-loving Anglosphere.

Michael Birbeck

All one can say about the majority of Labour's female MPs is that they stand out for their mediocrity in Labour's large mess of mediocrity. They need a couple more like Kate Hoey.

Who is Flint and what has she ever done?

Steve.W

Fergus Pickering – I can't stand Blears, I can't explain either, hope this won't spoil your weekend.

The Bellman

Michael Birbeck: "Who is Flint and what has she ever done?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/may/10/fashion-caroline-flint?picture=346969477

Mmmmmm...