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Flint keeps her edge
CAROLINE Flint declares today that she has "no regrets" over her dramatic departure from the Government, as Gordon Brown's administration appeared on the brink of collapse last month.
In the eyes of many, Ms Flint made herself look a less than serious political figure as she bitterly quit, apparently because she was not being invited to Cabinet meetings. She went on to accuse the Prime Minister of using women as "window dressing" just 19 hours after a very public avowal of loyalty to him.
The mode of her exit compounded a public image largely formed just weeks earlier when she posed for a set of fashion photographs which is said to have raised the ire of Downing Street – although it provided headline writers with a handy moniker as the "stiletto assassin".
Nevertheless in her interview with the Yorkshire Post today, Ms Flint raises a number of serious points including the lack of female MPs at Westminster. Certainly the number of women working elsewhere – notably in medicine and public sector management – has risen considerably in recent years, yet it is one of the many oddities of the place that Parliament remains, as the Don Valley MP says, a "gentleman's club".
Because of the circumstances, the Prime Minister was easily able to dismiss her resignation as thwarted personal ambition but her complaints about him remain valid – that he operates through an inner circle and undermines colleagues.
Mr Brown has no track record of accepting criticism and changing his ways and it remains to be seen if he will take on board her comments, as he surely should.
Labour MPs will certainly be desperately hoping so and like many of her colleagues, Ms Flint's support for him appears lukewarm.
Ms Flint, who insists she has "always been pretty direct", was right to say what she said. But in politics, as in life, timing is everything and by stopping the clock on her Ministerial career in the way she did, she got it badly wrong.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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