Fear or stupidity?

My first reaction on hearing of what Harriet Harman said at PMQs today about her becoming Prime Minister—she joked that if it wouldn’t be possible because there isn’t enough airport capacity to allow all the men who would want to, to leave the country—was that fear of Gordon’s henchmen had again led a possible leadership contender to go to absurd lengths to rule themselves out, remember how Alan Johnson declared he wasn’t intellectually up to the job of being PM on Desert Island Discs last autumn. But others told me I was being far too generous to Ms Harman and that she actually froze and couldn’t find a way out of the hole she was digging herself into. Having seen it (we go to press at one so I rarely get to watch PMQs live), I think I was being too kind. Harman was rather  desperately searching for some witty rejoinder and ended up blurting out the first thing that came into her head.