So Blears regrets everything?

[Jux]

Bit sudden wot?

[SusieDerkins]

Might have something to do with the vote of no confidence she's facing from her local party next week?

[policywonk]

How can she says she didn't know that her resigning on the eve of the election would have such an impact

I don't like all the slagging of female politicians that goes on on here, but I'll make an exception for Lying Squirrel Woman.

[Jux]

Oh, apparently it wasn't her fault and she wouldn't have done if people hadn't lied to her and told her everyone else was doing it.

[Hassled]

Yay! The politics topic!

Yes, she just gets worse and worse. I can't bear the woman, but she's not stupid - she knew exactly how she would further fuck things up for Labour by behaving as she did. All this "I will carry the burden of my guilt for ever" bollocks just makes me want to punch her.

[policywonk]

Something I don't get about Blears: she regards herself as the sort of straight-talking, no-nonsense, unspun 'hinterland' type that the public adore (Short, Mowlam, Clarke etc), but I've never come across anyone who has anything but dislike for her. It it different in the, y'know, North?

[policywonk]

In my last post - that's Ken Clarke, not Charles Clarke. Don't think anyone adores the latter.

at 'male spokespersons for L'Oreal'

[Jux]

Which female politicians get a hard time on here? I remember the power cuts under Wilson. I also remember Barbara Castle, and have read about Lady Asquith. I won't slag off any female politicians who are capable of living up to those two.

Most of this bunch are a disgrace to femalehood (their male counterparts a disgrace to malehood). A bunch of manipulative, dishonest fishwives. I know, I used to come across a lot of the Blair Babes before they were elected, through work. I wouldn't trust any of them further than I could throw them. HH has long been an object of utter loathing to me, as I remember her and her husband while they were 'living in obscurity' and I was one of her constituents. A pox on the lot of them; they're not worth our taxes.

[Hassled]

I've never seen her in that category of straight-talking politicians you can't help but like - the difference is, I guess, that the people you listed are/were sincere. You might not have agreed with them, but you knew that they believed in what they said. There was no flannel, no smokescreen.

Blears is a whole different league - she doesn't engender empathy in the same way. I think it's something you either have or don't have - can't be taught.

[Hassled]

Charles Clarke is my MP - we heard nothing from him for years and years, while he was busy being Home Sec. Now we are inundated with flyers giving us his views on the state of the local shopping precinct etc. I suppose we should be grateful .

[policywonk]

Jux - well yes, HH was one of those I was thinking of - and Jacqui S. And there was a thread a couple of weeks ago on which some female politician was getting a right kicking - can't remember who she was, it might come to me...

I don't agree with everything HH and JS have done by any means, but I do think they're proper grown-up feminists and have done good stuff on equality, DV, trafficking etc.

Most male politicians don't live up to Castle either, but they don't get a hard time for it.

[policywonk]

In fact it might even have been Blears who was getting a kicking on here - but for her appearance/accent rather than her dishonesty.

[policywonk]

Clarke reminds me of Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas. Maybe you could suggest that he be Santa in your local shopping precinct this year? He might need the employment by then...

[artichokes]

I have not seen the interview but how did she explain the badge she wore for her resignation??? How can she now pretend she was not trying to "rock the boat"?

[Katisha]

Oh she says she was under stress and now regrets the brooch...

[policywonk]

artichokes, she got all teary about the badge and said she had just been trying to put a brave face on it all

I dunno, maybe it's just my perception with the female politican-bashing. I just wonder whether female politicos are more visible to us (there are fewer of them, we're more interested in them than we are in Mr Lobby Fodder MP), so their bad moves/mistakes are picked over much more mercilessly than those of equivalent males. I mean, Clarke was a horribly illiberal Home Sec - did he get a bad time on here? (I wasn't on here then.)

[notnowbernard]

She got teary?!

I don't believe her

The badge-wearing was a very orchestrated attempt to rub salt in a wound she expected to turn gangrenous (sp?)

Except it didn't, did it?

So essentially she's shat on her own doorstep

[VoodooApocalypse]

I'm oop north and I hate Blears.
'squirrel' is a good descriptive word, kind of ratty and shrill and nuts.

[Hassled]

Agree with Stewie'sMom- we have higher expectations. And then they have further to fall.

For example, I'm struggling with Caroline Flint - as in I don't know what to think. On the one hand that Observer photoshoot was fair enough - she's an attractive woman doing a light piece about clothes etc. Why shouldn't she care about clothes? Why shouldn't she want to try to appeal to whatever the Observer Woman demographic is?

On the other hand, it makes her, and by extension other female MPs, look lightweight. There's no gravitas; it's not the way to be taken seriously. And then to accuse Brown of using her as window dressing - when she'd already done that to herself - seems ridiculous.

[Laugs]

I don't like Blears, but she did seem to get a harder time than any of the other MPs who manipulated the expences system for their own gain, and she wasn't the worst, I don't think. Harriet Harman seems alright to me - why do you so hate her, Jux?

I think I instinctively feel more let down by female politicians when they do wrong, but also more of an urge to protect them too. I feel sad so many women have left the government. If that's not a comment on GB's policy of giving better jobs to the boys, it certainly appears to be.

[policywonk]

Higher expectations is a nice way to think of it Maybe you're right. I really don't think Harman and Smith have had the praise they should have had for equality/DV/trafficking measures (yet they certainly take royal kickings for the bad stuff - of which there is plenty, don't get me wrong.) But maybe this is because I agreed with Harman and Smith's approaches to them. (In that other people also think these things are important, obviously, but disagree with NuLab's approach.)

Flint - well yes, it's an open-and-shut case isn't it? You just can't do a photo shoot like that and then complain about window dressing. It's ridiculous. The male equivalent would be David Miliband, top three buttons undone, no tie, slim-fitting jeans, reclining open-leggedly on a chaise longue giving the camera a knowing look Except he'd never do it, cos he expects to be taken seriously.

It's quite possible that Brown has a problem with women - I dunno. The figures on cabinet representation don't look good - but then he is very close to some women, politically (Shriti Vadera, Sue Nye). But whether he does or not, Flint made it impossible for herself to be taken seriously on the issue.

[policywonk]

Oh and I'll tell you one thing that has been annoying me: the constant hum that Smith 'wasn't up to the job' of Home Secretary. Now, isn't it true that every HS in recent times has been thought of as having made an unbelievable hash of it? Isn't it the most difficult job in government? And isn't most of it (whisper it) done by civil servants anyway? Is there any particular evidence that Smith wasn't up to the job, rather than simply implementing some crazy and unpopular policies (detention without trial, ID cards)? So why is she the one who people say 'wasn't up to the job'?

That's a lot of questions, I know.

[TwoIfBySea]

Like all of them, she regrets not what she did but that she was caught doing it.