Nothing in Caroline Flint’s CV would have marked her out as someone who would end up marshalling 19 of her fellow Labour MPs through the ‘aye’ lobby to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal. One of the original ‘Blair babes’, she went on to become Gordon Brown’s minister for Europe. She campaigned for Remain in the referendum but this week she ended up telling MPs that ‘the EU is not God’ while fending off accusations that she is the devil. One commentator called her ‘a heroine for those seeking to turbo-charge Thatcherism’. He didn’t mean it kindly.
When we meet in her office, on another one of the supposed Brexit make-or-break days, she is preparing for further battle. ‘I just think: hang on a minute, I’m the moderate here,’ she says. ‘I’m trying to stop no-deal by getting a deal. Accepting that we’ve had a vote to leave the European Union.’ Labour, she says, owes Brussels nothing.
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