HATTIE'S GORD GIVEN RIGHT

By: watches2010 Mood: Date: 02/01/2010 19:29:41 Music: None

HOW unfortunate. After predictions that Gordon Brown will dispense with bossy Blair babes Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell and Margaret Beckett, he's now lumbered with Fendi Fake Handbags Queen of Mean Harriet "I would never spend more than pounds 50 on a handbag" Harman (left).

It's not been a good start. Within 24 hours of becoming Labour's deputy leader she made the spectacular gaffe of denying something she said less than a month ago, winning herself the nickname "Hopeless Hattie".

A marginal improvement, at least, on Gwyneth Dunwoody's description of her as one of those "women of the opinion that led flexible they had a God-given right to be among the chosen". Normally I'd have dismissed this as Westminster tittle-tattle till a TV company driver picked me up and confessed on the way to the studio that I'd saved him from the short straw.

"I nearly had that Labour woman in the car," he explained. "You know, 'Horrible Harman'."

A politician's verdict can be dodgy. A cabbie's - never.