Window dressing: a portrait of Caroline Flint

One of Caroline Flint's earliest appearances in the national press came in a piece by Peter Tory of the Daily Express. Writing about the 1990 Labour Party conference, he cited her as an example of there being 'so little wit in today's politics'.

Twenty-five years on, she is now a candidate for the deputy leadership of the party, but in all that time there has been little to dispel that initial impression.

Born in 1961, Caroline Flint studied American Literature and History at the University of East Anglia. While there, she later revealed, she smoked a cannabis joint, but, as the papers reported: 'she didn't like the taste and the fact that it was illegal acted "as a brake", she told journalists over drinks at the Home Office.' (This, it appears, is the one infallible sign of a politician of the future: they're the students who only tried cannabis once and found that it brought them no pleasure.)

Her early jobs included stints as head of the women's unit of the National Union of Students, as an equal opportunities officer with Lambeth council, and as a senior researcher for the GMB union, before being elected to Parliament to represent the ultra-safe Labour seat of Don Valley in 1997.

This was the era, of course, of 'Blair's Babes': the disparaging term used to refer to the 101 women who became Labour MPs in the landslide victory. Of the new members in this company, Flint was soon talked of as one of the future high-fliers, along with Yvette Cooper, Charlotte Atkins, Valerie Davey, Judy Mallaber and Candy Atherton.

Perhaps a clue to the conduct of her career could be found when she was asked, along with the other women MPs, to contribute some inspiring lines for a book that was to raise money for a breast cancer charity. Flint chose lyrics from the Bruce Springsteen song 'The Ghost of Tom Joad':

Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
or decent job or helpin' hand,
wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free,
look in their eyes Mom, you'll see me.

(One of her current rivals for the deputy leadership, Angela Eagle, incidentally, went with a Barbara Castle quote: 'In politics, guts is everything.')

Or perhaps a clue could be found in the photo-shoot she did for Elle magazine, declaring that it was 'time to get some glamour into politics'.

Inside Parliament she became known for her almost obsequious loyalty to the leadership. The ghost of Tom Joad might not have been impressed, for example, to see her dutifully lined up to support the cuts in benefits to single parents in December 1997, the first great controversy of Tony Blair's government. She was, wrote Nick Cohen, 'a thoroughly New Labour MP', while Simon Hoggart thought she was 'the most egregiously greasy Labour backbencher'.

By the end of 1998 she was to be heard proudly proclaiming: 'Of course New Labour's radical. Tony Blair is the first Labour prime minister to declare war!'

Re-elected in 2001, she remained loyal, while also displaying the most progressive of attitudes, coming together with David Miliband, Jim Murphy and other Labour MPs to form a group campaigning for Britain to adopt the euro.

In 2003 she did finally vote against Tony Blair's expressed wishes, but it was only on the subject of fox-hunting. She was one of more than three hundred Labour MPs who voted for a complete ban on the sport, and since seven members of the cabinet were in that number, it was perhaps not as great a risk as it might have been.

Promoted into government, she was the home office minister responsible for drugs policy when cannabis was downgraded from class B to class C in 2004, and steered through Parliament the Drugs Bill that made magic mushrooms illegal. Both those were controversial moves, though controversial in different quarters.

Primarily associated with the Blairite camp in the petty wars of New Labour, she was nonetheless promoted by Gordon Brown when he became prime minister.

As housing minister in 2008, she attracted enormous criticism with a suggestion that unemployed people should have to sign 'commitment contracts', whereby they promised to seek work before they could become social housing tenants. 'The link between social housing and worklessness is stark,' she said, and she was prepared to break it.

Her proposals were promptly attacked by charities such as Crisis, the National Housing Association and Shelter. 'The government wants to return Britain's unemployed to the workhouse by throwing them onto the streets,' commented the chief executive of the latter, perhaps a little histrionically, while Labour MP Austin Mitchell remarked: 'She must have flipped.' In fact, everyone attacked the plans, said the Morning Star, 'even the Tory Party, whose housing spokesman Grant Shapps showed a better understanding of councils' legal obligations to the homeless than Flint did.'

Clearly disturbed by the hostile response, Gordon Brown refused to come out in public to support the idea. His spokesperson said only that the prime minister thought 'in principle it's a good idea to be debated'.

The incident didn't impede her career, however, and her enthusiasm for the European Union saw her promoted to minister for Europe in October 2008. She was not quite in the cabinet, yet somehow not quite outside it either, since she was allowed to attend some meetings.

Hew new role came at a time when the whispering campaign against Brown was growing in volume, and Flint - as a Blairite - was assumed to be part of the conspiracy to force him out of office. The crunch moment came in June 2009 when James Purnell became the third cabinet minister in a week to resign, following Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith. His resignation statement said in public what everyone already knew: that the party stood no chance of being re-elected while Brown remained leader.

(This, it will be remembered, was the occasion when David Miliband was expected to lead a coup, but proved not to have the bottle for the job.)

Flint responded immediately to Purnell's resignation, issuing an unequivocal statement to say that she would not be following her colleague's lead. 'I am very proud to be a member of Gordon Brown's government,' she insisted.

This display of loyalty came as a surprise to some, including perhaps to her. For within twenty-four hours, she had handed in her own resignation letter to Brown, denouncing his 'two-tier government', and adding: 'several of the women attending cabinet - myself included - have been treated by you as little more than female window dressing. I am not willing to attend cabinet in a peripheral capacity any longer.'

That phrase - 'female window dressing' - became her best known utterance, though another line was perhaps more accurate: 'I am a natural party loyalist.'

In 2010 there was some half-hearted speculation in the press that she might herself run for the leadership, but she chose not to do so. Instead she followed her Blairite instincts and voted for David Miliband. Even so, she was given a senior job in Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet. 'Ed,' she declared, 'will have my full backing.'

This is the second in a series of posts in which - unless I fall by the wayside - I shall be looking at each of the candidates in the current Labour Party elections for leader and deputy leader, with portraits drawn entirely from their media coverage.

Things are different today

They're not in love, it's just a silly phase they're going through. Kevin Meagher in the New Statesman points out that Labour Party members have always had a bad reaction to being in government, tending to fall out with each other, before pulling themselves together and trying again.

Meagher is quite right, of course. There is a depressing familiarity about Labour's behaviour during the current leadership election. So as they say on The News Quiz, I brought along some cuttings to make the point. These have been culled at random from a very cursory glance through the papers.

So here's Herbert Morrison in 1952, after the fall of Clement Attlee's government, being asked: 'Is it true that the Labour Party is torn by internal dissensions or feuds?' To which he replies: 'There are differences of opinion and many of them are in the process of being argued out. In a progressive party there is plenty of room for argument.'

Despite those 'differences', Labour did come back from the 1951 election defeat, though it spent thirteen years out of office first.

After Harold Wilson's government lost power in 1970, the period in opposition saw bitter divisions over Britain's membership of the European Community. Roy Jenkins and other pro-Europe Labour MPs defied the party whip and voted for Britain's entry, causing Tony Benn to write in his diary about the emergence of 'a new political party under the surface'. Roy Hattersley later reflected that Jenkins's rebellion 'was the moment when the old Labour coalition began to collapse'.

As the Daily Express pointed out in a leader column: 'The longer the feuding, the poorer grows Labour's credibility. That is not good for the country. Our parliamentary democracy demands a strong, vigorous opposition.'

Happily for Labour, the Conservative government of Edward Heath was so disastrous that the electorate removed it from office after just four years. It was a close-run thing though: the Tories got more votes in the February 1974 general election than did Labour.

And then there was the most divisive episode since the war: the fallout from the 1979 election defeat, with the rise of Bennism, the departure of the SDP and a full eighteen years in opposition.

So Kevin Meagher is perfectly right that, even if the Labour Party were daft enough to elect Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, this is (just about) in keeping with tradition. But it feels different this time. Different at least to 1981, the only occasion of which I have personal memories.

And I think Meagher may be a little optimistic is his conclusion: 'Ultimately Labour will survive - as it always has done before.'

I'm not entirely convinced by this. It's the most likely outcome, admittedly. But I've been saying for the last few years that the current political alignment was unsustainable, predicting that: 'New political forces will emerge, whether within the existing parties or outside them.'

Maybe it's the start of that re-alignment that we're now seeing.

It's that man again

Silly Season has started well this year. On Saturday the Sun ran a fabulous front-page picture of the present Queen as a child in 1933 giving a fascist salute in her back garden. Since Adolf Hitler is thus thrust back onto the news agenda, I thought it'd be worth looking through the newspapers to see what impression he made on the British press when he was first noticed. So here are some extracts from 1923:

'Already the so-called Bavarian Fascists - the National Socialist Workers' party, under Herr Adolf Hitler - are dreaming of "an army of revenge" which, according to Herr Hitler, is to "restore Germany to her former greatness".' - Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 16 January 1923

'Hitler is known to be a very energetic person, and has long been known to be preparing a "putsch" against the Berlin government.' - Gloucester Citizen 23 January 1923

'In unoccupied Germany the chief manifestations of madness occur in Bavaria, where one Adolf Hitler, a house painter by trade, has found a large and dangerous following whose objects, apart from revolution, are not much clearer than those of the Italian Fascists, whom in general they would like to copy. If they succeeded, Germany, like Italy, would be in the hands of a military dictator.' - Manchester Guardian 30 January 1923

'The political prophets are in a better position. They benefit by the anti-Republican sentiment of the authorities, and are enabled to carry on their propaganda unmolested. The most successful is Dr Adolf Hitler, the "Bavarian Mussolini". But his influence is beginning to decrease, for after three years of agitation he has accomplished nothing beyond holding reviews and designing emblems.' - Daily Express 15 February 1923

'At last night's Fascist rally in the Crown Circus, half an hour before the proceedings began the large hall was filled, and on his arrival, accompanied by his usual bodyguard of storm troops, the Fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, was given a reception that a returning victorious general might envy... The deliberately provocative attitude of Hitler's storm troops, who swagger truculently about the streets of Munich, is becoming more noticeable every day.' - Times 13 April 1923

'The Bavarian Nationalists, of whose leader, Adolf Hitler, a portrait appears on our "Personal" page [above], recently held a great demonstration at Nuremberg. They had adopted the swastika as a badge for banners and armlets. Their aim is declared to be to overthrow the Republic, restore Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, eject Jews from Germany, and prepare for a war of revenge against France.' - Illustrated London News 15 September 1923

'Dr Gessler, the Minister of Defence, was yesterday appointed Dictator of Germany by President Ebert... Great nervousness prevails in Munich. According to reports in the Berlin newspapers, Adolf Hitler intends to let loose the forces which he commands. If he does so it is certain that the "Putsch" would not be confined to Bavaria, and it is probably with this knowledge that President Ebert has issued his decree.' - Daily Mirror 28 September 1923

'"He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day" is evidently the motto of Herr Adolf Hitler, the commander of he Bavarian National Socialists. The fact that he did not press his objection to the Commissioner-General's ban so far as to hold his much-advertised fourteen meetings last night, has severely shaken the prestige of the Fascisti leader, and it will probably take some time he recovers from the blow.' - Aberdeen Journal 29 September 1923

MPs vote themselves a pay rise

With MPs about to receive their undoubtedly deserved 10 per cent pay rise, it's worth bearing in mind that there's nothing new about public dissatisfaction with politicians' wages. 

This is a cutting from the 25 May 1954 edition of the Daily Express, sixty-one years ago, mocking MPs as they cheerfully voted themselves more money, despite the professed opposition of the government:

I particularly like Bob Boothby's warning: 'We are reaching the stage when this House will be composed of company directors, trade union officials, journalists and a diminishing number of those with inherited wealth.' Trade union officials, indeed!

School sign's out

In 1955 John Boyd-Carpenter, transport minister in the Conservative government of Anthony Eden, introduced some new road signs to Britain. They weren't destined to last long - superseded in just a few years by the celebrated work of designer Margaret Calvert - but they did mark a significant change in British signage.

In particular there is the one illustrated here, extracted from the Daily Express in September 1955. The old symbol for a School - a flaming torch - was replaced by a much more literal depiction: probably safer, but perhaps lacking in poetry?

What I hadn't previously realised is that this change was an attempt by Britain to fit in with the ways of our continental cousins. Which just goes to show that you really can't trust the Conservatives on Europe: Britain entry into the Eurovision Song Contest, decimal currency, the Single European Act, and now this - all on the Tory watch.

Millionaires - an endangered species

A report from the Daily Express in 1954:

'There are now only 36 people left in the millionaire class of taxpayers in Britain. A year ago there were 60. And in 1939 the number was 1,024.

'Yesterday Inland Revenue figures for the year ended March 31 1953 showed that only 36 people had incomes of more than £6,000 a year after tax. A tax official said: "To be left with £6,000 means you must earn at least £56,000 or have a million pounds invested at about five per cent."

'The report covers the first full year's drive against savers who had escaped tax on interest on savings in Post Office and other banks - and showed that more than £16,000,000 had been raked in.'