DIVERSITY TORY STYLE

Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party (well, after Lord Mandleson of course), seemed to lose the plot in her speech to conference.

Departing from her script, Harman, who is the niece of a Baroness, and who was educated at one of England’s top private schools for girls, in a class war blunder it’s hard to believe even she could have made, painted a picture of a Diversity Evening at the Tories’ Conference next week.

According to the Daily Mail, she suggested that it could be held in the Carlton Club and that David Cameron could propose more opportunities for fox hunting. She went on to suggest that George Osborne would replace Sure Start with Lap Dancing clubs, and that Theresa May, the Shadow Equalities Minister would not be allowed to speak because she is a woman. She might, however, be allowed to serve the drinks.

Harman is no stranger to opening her mouth and letting her belly rumble. Just before the MPs’ expenses scandal broke, while Fred Goodwin’s pension was the subject of much approbation, and when she herself was in the spotlight over her plotting to replace Gordon Brown, she famously suggested that Mr Goodwin’s pension would not happen, because the Prime Minister did not want it to happen (as if he were some mediaeval emperor), and followed it up with her famous gaff about the court of public opinion deciding Mr Goodwin’s fate. This was a remark she was destined to regret bitterly when a couple of weeks later half her colleagues were on the ropes for expense difficulties and the aforesaid court of her invention was working overtime.

Insiders close to Ms Harman apparently said it was light-hearted fun, but you do have to wonder about the judgement of this woman who is not only a lawyer by profession, but a QC!