Gordon pleads for one last chance from the girls

10 June 2009

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Melissa Kite says that the PM is ill at ease with female colleagues. No surprise that it was the women — Blears, Flint, Kennedy — who rebelled while the men hid under the table

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.’

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Waving not drowning

June 11th, 2009 12:29pm Report this comment

Ms Kite, you write:

‘It’s disgusting,’ said one. ‘It’s the ghastly macho culture in there. It’s all willy-waving.’

Question: Why do men obsessively 'willy wave'.

Answer: Beause they can.

Maria

June 11th, 2009 1:08pm Report this comment

"the undeniably clever Yvette Cooper". I'm open to being convinced but she has never seemed that way to me. Perhaps it is because she cobbles together all the Labour cliches when she speaks. But how are we to know she is"clever" if she talks like a minimally programmed robot?

Christopher Chantrill

June 11th, 2009 4:01pm Report this comment

I'd say this illustrates the difference between honour in men and honour in women.

Honour in men is staying in line with your brothers, no matter what. Honour in women is chastity, staying pure, doing the right thing, no matter what.