Harriet Harman is either thick or criminally disingenuous

Labour’s deputy leader is tipped to succeed Gordon Brown, says Rod Liddle. But her vacuous feminism, her reflex loathing of men, her lack of interest in real statistics and her worrying links with trade unions would spell disaster for the party

So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober. The alcohol is sloshing around inside your brain, you’ve enjoyed a post-pub doner kebab together and maybe some grilled halloumi (a woman’s right to cheese) and she suggests, as you stand inside the frowsy minicab office: fancy going south, big boy? (I don’t know for sure that she’d use the term ‘big boy’; this is largely hypothetical stuff, you understand.) Anyway, the husband — Jack — is chilling in their second home in Suffolk, the kids are with their scary godmother Patricia Hewitt and the Peckham pad is free for the night. You imagine what might happen, what carnal delights are in store: Harriet fixing up some Moldovan Fairtrade coffee and then back in the living-room minxily slipping out of her stab-vest, the one she tends to wear while in her constituency, while sliding a sultry Joan Armatrading CD on the stereo. Would you? I think you wouldn’t. I think you have more self-respect, a greater sense of self-worth, no matter how much you’ve had to drink. I think you’d make your excuses and leave, just as the first bars of ‘Me Myself I’ strike up. I think you’d do the same with most of the babes who were once, or are now, on the government front bench.