Jobs For The Boys

Is it depressing or is it the new reality? No, they aren't the alternate lines to the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody but my reaction to the new Cabinet. Three women out of 30: Caroline Spelman (Farming, Food and Rural Affairs), Cheryl Gillan (Welsh Secretary) - and wasn't she in Deep Purple?, Theresa May (above) (Home Secretary) and, the token ethnic minority, Minister without Portfolio Baroness Warsi.

It's like Mrs Thatcher never happened or is this the first sandbag damning the ever increasing tide of political correctness. Has new Conservatism, like water, reached its natural level, the level that traditionally admires the family, but dislikes women in power or places where they can actually be seen, and prefers their ethnic minorities to be holding a silver tray with afternoon tea on it?

Yes of course you can argue till the cows come home that places should be filled on the grounds of experience but this is the first Conservative attempt at forming a new Government since 1992. Where were the female candidates? Even on the second string of Government positions there are only five out of thirty places filled by women and not a single one of those is in a job which requires the incumbent to attend Cabinet meetings.

Meanwhile over at Labour the fight to lead the band of wowdy webels has begun, the rush to the front of the dinner queue lead by Miliband major and Miliband minor. Unfortunately I can't help thinking that the party is looking at the wrong sex in choosing its next leader.

If it all goes tits up with one of the Milibands in charge then I think somewhere in middle England a recording of 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina' will be playing, constantly repeating the lines:

"They are illusions
They're not the solutions
They promise to be
The answer was here all the time
I love you and hope you love me"

Yvette Cooper should be the next leader of the Labour Party, there's no other candidate as far as I'm concerned. She has the misfortune of being tainted with the expenses scandal due to some flipping but she has an old labour conscience in a new labour body. I know she's married to Ed Balls but don't judge the couple, judge the individual. She fought long and hard for the Labour Government to take the need for social housing more seriously, she was the first women ever to occupy the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and she knows how Government works, having been in the House since 1997. She's the daughter of a Union official, went to a local Comprehensive school before going via Oxford and Harvard to the LSE (traditional breeding ground of old Labour activists).

In the, not quite, words of John Lennon, "All we are saying, is give Yvette a chance."

Oh, and just in case somebody happens to be passing who isn't familiar with my sense of humour, that isn't Theresa May (Home Secretary) above, it's Teresa May former porn model. And she really did wear fuck me shoes!