Out like Flint

Gordon Brown is not very comfortable with women. Intellectually he has grasped the idea that women expect to contribute at all levels of life but he really can't bring himself to see them as part of the gang. So Caroline Flint's criticism - that she was there as "window dressing" - is probably accurate. Yvette Cooper gets in to the gang becasue she is the wife of one of the boys. Harriet Harman, annoyingly for him, gets in because she has actually been elected to something and he can't ignore her.

Gordon Brown is probably a happier man this morning. All these pestilential women with their shrill demands and annoying feminine ways have now absented themselves from the table, so now the boys can get together, tell jokes, get on with their purposes without having to constrain their behaviour. What a relief!

Caroline Flint has not departed with glory. She could have supported her friends but chose instead to support Brown with the hope of some advancement. She should have known better. Brown does not respond to fluttering of eyelids and she was getting nothing out of him but to be minister who occasionally attends cabinet meetings.