Harman’s schtick

Rhoda Klapp

Politician promises to listen. Film at 11.

Occasional Ostrich

Couldn't happen to a nicer party!

libertarian

I think this is a good idea. Those half of the shadow cabinet that are women should half of them also be from an ethnic background? Oh and should half of them be gay? Oh and of course half of them should be disabled. Oh and half should be over 50 and half should be under 21

I really do think that Harriet should be leader of the Labour party well at least half of it anyway

Nicholas

Silly cow.

What she attributes to Labour's loss of support is a trite invented soundbite a million miles off the mark. It makes a mockery of "We must listen and learn".

How about this Harriet, you listen and learn first, THEN you announce what went wrong.

Alan Douglas

"hard-working families worried about housing and jobs".

Rubbish. HWFs are worried about how hard they have to work just to remain a HWF, and how little they actually get after Labour takes 48 - 53 % of all in tax.

They also resent Labour taking away so much of what they consider theirs, and then having to fill out multiple 40-page forms to plead for some of it back by "credits" and other ways, all at the whim of some hatchet-faced and suspicious and possibly incompetent pen-pusher.

Alan Douglas

Tim Carpenter LPUK

"We still do have twice as many men MPs as women. The Labour men are great - but they are not twice as good as the women.""

And this person is a Privy Councillor? Someone who sits in our legislature? Someone who talks such utter irrational, illogical, non sequiturs?

It would not surprise me if the Labour Party bit. They are against meritocracy, all for tokenism and a quotacracy.

Kennybhoy

Ye god but I wish she was standing for the Labour leadership! LOL!

Mark Cannon

Who will speak for families which do not work hard, if not Labour?

Y Rhyfelwr Dewr

So the primary qualification for a shadow cabinet position will be not ability, but whether or not you are a woman.

The Labour Party has come full circle, turning its back on meritocracy in favour of privilege by accident of birth.

Martin C

Strange how Harriet dropped her insistance on all-female shortlists when her husband, the union leader Jack Dromey, was parachuted into a safe Labour seat last month. Well, now he's now safely elected as an MP, Harriet's feminist agenda is back at full throttle again. The naked hyprocrisy of it all is jaw-dropping.

Bruce Robertson

Alan Douglas: (11:19) "...after Labour takes 48 - 53 % of all in tax."

Hard to get used to using the past tense, isn't it?

Chuck Unsworth

Is this the top half or the bottom half? Or is it maybe the left half or the right half? Which half is she on about?

Meanwhile I'm off for a swift half - or several.

Peter A

Harman is doing a brilliant job of hammering in the final nails.The great fun in all this will be watching the labour party retreat from this absurd position.

Moraymint

Silly moo.

Naomi Muse

She's still setting targets and ticking boxes - that sure is the way to connect and listen to the electorate!

If targets are set then you can totally ignore anything else, so it makes life easier?!

Tiberius

That coffee container she's holding is the most sexist, fascist thing I've ever seen. How any self-respecting harridan could have anything to do with it beats me.

pete-s

When Harman was trying to pass her current batch of equality bills, she was admonished for misleading Parliament with her statistics about female wages. In other words she will gladly lie to get her way.

PC Gone Wild

Surely that makes her discriminatory with respect to transexuals. She should be pushing for 1/3 male, 1/3 female and 1/3 transgender (or make it a quarter each to have a quota of FTM and MTF separately). Whatever is wrong with including people solely on their merits?

lescam

I'm gettin very sick of the "hard working families" crap. What about the many families who are "unable" to work, and "need" to live on benefits? What about genuinely hardworking singles, or childless couples? This hardworking families cliche should be dropped.

As for Harman, I can see her point about a 50/50 male/female Cabinet, but the point remains that fewer women than men appear to be interested in going into politics in the first place, and most of the ones who do are not of the intellect required for Cabinet places. In fact, with the honourable exceptions of Margaret Thatcher and Betty Boothroyd, I am unable to think of a single woman who has been a real success in Parliament. The rest have all been a waste of space.

Nash

where was GB on his list of reasons for losing the election?

Ian C

Perhaps she thinks women smell nicer, or look nicer sitting round a table, or don't shout so much, or forget to shave. Or.... what else could it be.....?

Snowman

PC Gone Wild @ 2.13:

You racist or what? where’s the representation of ethnicity in your three thirds; back to the drawing board, and think before you say anything again.

anne allan

So, as he was chosen from an all-women shortlist, would Mr. Harriet Harman MP be inserted into the Shadow Cabinet as one of the 50%?

David Parker

And just how would his Harmaniac government be described? The petticoat cabinet, or perhaps the females in labour ward?

Alexander

Harriett Harman shows the advantages of a private education - she has the self confidence to rise to the top of the Labour Party and be quite successful even though she is quite dim.

Had she gone to a State School she would have ended up a housewife because she would have regarded her dimness as an obstacle to success.

David Lindsay

Ed Miliband has gone down in my estimation, and it is not as if he was all that high in it to start with. Higher than his brother or Ed Balls, but that's not saying anything. However, that best of a bad lot has today come out in support of Harriet Harman's latest wheeze, to reserve fifty per cent of Shadow Cabinet positions to women. What Harman has not, at least as yet, done is announce that she is nominating the only woman candidate for Labour Leader. Will she do so?

After all, those who have done so have now been joined by Jon Trickett, PPS to Gordon Brown. Diane Abbott's nomination by Kelvin Hopkins also reflects well on her. Her record on civil liberties is better than that of John McDonnell, who voted in favour of the Digital Economy Bill. His opposition to the third runway at Heathrow, although I can see both sides on that one, did line him up with the luvvies against the unions.

As for most of the other stuff trotted out, so to speak, against either him or Abbott, what was being said and done in those days by, for example, Harriet Harman? They both certainly bear comparison. And if Harold Wilson could have his Prime Ministerial chauffeur drop off his progeny at fee-paying schools, then how has Abbott done anything wrong? There has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish private schools, which produced Attlee, Gaitskell (Winchester, no less) and Foot.

It now seems practically certain that there will be no one on the ballot who was not a member of the Government that was recently kicked out on its ear. How stupid is that? Nor will there be anyone who as an MP voted against the Iraq War. How sickening is that? Of the two such potential candidates, it is John McDonnell who has been nominated by Frank Field, by Kate Hoey, by the pro-life Catholic Ronnie Campbell, and by no one who is not a card-carrying Eurosceptic.

John's failure to secure enough nominations to stand will indeed be to the shame of Diane Abbott. But it will expose the fact that the broad-based but identifiable Labour Party of which he conceives no longer exists, will never exist again, and is in any case about to be rendered obsolete even as an ideal by electoral reform.

It is time to start again.

Major Plonquer

I think in Harman's case she actually means that for each member of the Shadow Cabinet their upper half should be male and their lower regions female.

I suspect her motivation might only be to keep Balls off the front bench.

Dennis Churchill

The logical result of using Equal Outcomes is a statistically valid cross section of the country, similar to a Focus group.
So why not do away with elections and appoint a statistically valid cross section of the community to replace MPs? These could be changed every 4 years or so.