Women in Brown’s cabinet
I imagine everyone’s been playing “fantasy cabinet” with their friends recently - well, at least political junkies like us have, haven’t we, dear readers? Fantasy cabinet is of course a misnomer, as the rules of the game prevent you from putting Jed Bartlett / Michael Moore / Spiderman / Hillary Clinton (delete as appropriate) into Brown’s first cabinet as they’re not actually Labour MPs, but still, it passes the time.
I’m not going to bore you with my predictions, which would be totally uninformed and thus distinctly unilluminating. But I do have a bit of a concern about how many women there will be in Brown’s cabinet. Purists will say that it doesn’t matter, that it’s the politics of the thing that make the difference, but I’m afraid on this, appearances do matter, and having fewer women in the Cabinet would be a disastrous mistake to make - and one that should be easily avoidable.
If you think about who’s likely to go, it’s Hewitt, Jowell, Armstrong and Kelly that spring to mind first. Amos may also go, I reckon. Margaret Beckett may hang on, and Ruth Kelly has a technocratic past in the Treasury so may survive, but really, how many more chances does the woman get?! I reckon Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears stay in and Yvette Cooper and Harriet Harman get a promotion (HH is not going to win the deputy contest, but surely could get the ministry of justice?) But that’s just five or six women in Cabinet, of 24 or so places, compared to eight now…
I imagine the solution is to promote some junior ministers - Caroline Flint, perhaps?
UPDATE: gracious, you can actually play Fantasy Cabinet here. There goes the next few hours…
Don’t rule out your fantasy cabinet.
Lord Spiderman of New York sounds just fine.
Caroline Flint certainly, and maybe some others (Primarolo, Hodge (ok maybe not), Winterton), but this is a different issue from all-women shortlists. They are certainly justified - there are hundreds of people of both genders who could do the job of MP well.
There are far fewer available women for the Cabinet, since the pool is realistically of MPs who have already held some Government office. It would be wrong to blame Brown if the problem has been under-promotion of women to the lower ranks of Government in earlier years.
Putting women in the Cabinet before they’re ready for it simply because you want more women would be bad for them as individuals (they’ll quite probably fail) and bad for women in politics in general (they’ll be perceived as incompetent when the problem is simply that they were underprepared).
Might be some candidates from the Lords, if you can face it - Baronesses Scotland and Ashton, maybe.
Lib Dem women?
I think Yvette Cooper is someone who should get a promotion.
“HH is not going to win the deputy contest”
A jinx perhaps?
Shows what I know, eh? My mother - not a political junkie like me - thought it would be HH, and I pooh-poohed her. Have just rung to grovel
Forgive me, but Jed Bartlett would never make a Cabinet of my fantasy. To me it’s akin to saying let’s have Ken Clarke or John Selwyn Gummer in the Cabinet. Except that, AFAIK, Ken Clarke/JSG are not in favour of Capital Punishment