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
Remember the Brown Bounce? Yes, there really was one. It was back in September 2007 and Gordon was riding high on a wave of popularity. Honestly, I’m not making this up.
A YouGov poll gave the Prime Minister a commanding 11-point lead over the Tories after his appeal to traditional values at the Labour party conference. What’s more, among women voters the Labour lead was an astonishing 16 per cent — 16 per cent! Mr Brown must have fevered dreams about that now. Wavy graphs with red lines soaring above blue lines must drift past him in his sleep like Homer Simpson dreaming about beer. Acres of coverage were generated in that week about how Gordon’s serious, competent manner was a hit with women. The solid, dependable bank manager in him left us weak at the knees, it was said.
It was a reasonable sort of thesis. After being routinely cheated by the suave, second-hand car salesman Tony, we girls were up for the dull but reliable Gordon in a big way. With his tasteful, sensible wife Sarah in tow — oh, how unlike the frightful Cherie with her freebies and conmen and weird health gurus with crystals — boring Gordon was just what we needed.
But behind the scenes at that conference, women ministers were telling another story. The barely concealed despair of one female member of the government at Brown’s relentlessly dour philosophy on life tumbled out during a private dinner in a conference hotel. ‘Gordon just doesn’t understand why anyone would want to spend money on a handbag,’ she lamented, clutching her designer briefcase protectively close to her chair.
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