“Seeing my name on a list of cabinet members made me feel a bit of a fraud”: The Caroline Flint interview

Caroline Flint is the former Europe minister and MP for Don Valley. She met Alex Smith on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at the Houses of Parliament.

You left the cabinet six months ago now. What have you been doing with yourself since June?
Well, what’s been great is that I’ve been able to spend more time on things in the constituency. Obviously, with the election coming up over the next few months, it’s allowed me to look at how the office is run, and to focus on campaigns we’re fighting locally. And to be honest it’s been good to take a bit of time out from being the prisoner of the ministerial box; you only realise when you step away from that how totally all-consuming it is in terms of time. No sooner have you finished one meeting as a minister, you’re in another. So having a bit of time to think about the constituency and what I want to do there and to think about policies I’d like to be able to contribute a little bit more on – because you’re quite confined as a minister from talking on anybody else’s portfolio – has been good.

It must have been a time for reflection as well?
Absolutely. People ask me what my best time was as a minister – and I’ve loved all of the opportunities – but I have to say the first two jobs in the Home Office and in Health, where I was there for two years each time, did allow me to really get my teeth into things and see them through from beginning to end. There was the smoking legislation in Health and setting up the serious organised crime agency in the Home Office. But as a minister when you first get into a department it’s a huge learning curve; information is thrown at you, you’re going through the motions to start with, you need to find your voice and it takes a while to adjust.

How long does that take?
To be honest, I think it can take about four to six months. You’re getting a lot of information, and within that there’s a lot of developing trust to make sure what you’re being given is right. It’s only when you get beneath what’s in black and white on your submissions – and maybe go out and see things and talk to people outside the civil service about what policy really means on the ground and whether that’s being delivered effectively from Whitehall – that you start to find your own voice. You’re also constrained in those early months by the parameters that have been set by previous ministers or by the department, and only after a few months do you get to a point where you can challenge them.

Do you feel we lose consistency, expertise and institutional memory in the cabinet when personnel are so regularly changed?
Yes! I don’t want people to infer that when you first start as a minister you’re not doing the job, because you are doing the job. But you inherit a government agenda and you have to do that to the best of your ability. And sometimes making changes is unavoidable for a Prime Minister because someone leaves and you have to fill the gap. But I do think – and I’m not saying this about Gordon or Tony necessarily – but I do think we’ve got into a position in modern politics of the media expecting an annual ritual of reshuffles. Some might say that’s a good thing, but I personally feel that constantly moving around, and people spending six months in one department, nine months in another, while you gradually go up the ladder, isn’t a good way to make policy or to influence the department you’re working in.

Speaking of which, on the night of the European elections in June, I watched you give the Prime Minister your backing, but the next day you resigned in dramatic fashion and people said it was because you didn’t get the job or the promotion you wanted. Do you regret the way you handled that? Wouldn’t it have been better to step down at the same time as James Purnell, the night before?
It’s events that shape things. That week, leading up to the Thursday of the European elections, there had been a lot of speculation as to what might happen in the reshuffle. There’d been a number of stories circulating in the media about me being part of a plot. There was a story about me meeting some of my female friends in the Pugin Room when actually I was having coffee with one of my sons. Hazel had resigned and Jacqui had resigned. But Jacqui had told the Prime Minister some time before that she was intending to stand down. The way it came out wasn’t of Jacqui’s making. So on the Thursday, when I was up in my constituency trying to get out the vote for the European elections, I was being hounded by various sections of the media about this idea that I was stepping down. But I didn’t go into that week thinking I was going to step down. What really happened was that during the course of the day, there were discussions held with various people, and in good faith I ended up deciding that I would come out and say that the rumours that week were not true, that I wasn’t part of some organised plot – which I wasn’t – and that we’ve got to support the government. I can understand how it looks to people, but what was the turning point for me was having a conversation with the Prime Minister, which was quite similar to the conversation we had when I was moved from Housing, in which he questioned my loyalty and commitment.

Even though the night before you’d been publicly supportive of him?
Yes, yes, the next morning. And when that became part of the conversation, that was the point at which I thought, you know what, I think I’ll use my energies somewhere else. I know that looks bizarre in the context of me having been supportive the night before, but if the conversation had been different – and the questions about my loyalty hadn’t been raised – then regardless of what post the Prime Minister might have offered me, I might have stayed on. But this was also on the back of a situation where – having done the Europe job to the best of my ability, having spent a considerable amount of time going around the country talking about why Europe was important – it was still the case that having been moved from Housing to Europe Minister with the right to attend cabinet when Europe was being discussed, I spent eight months without being invited to discuss Europe at full cabinet meetings and never being invited at all to political cabinet meetings. I got on with the job and dealt with that, but then when my loyalty and commitment were again questioned in that reshuffle conversation, that’s when I thought, forget it, I’ve had enough.

You were obviously very angry as a result of that conversation and the Prime Minister doubting your loyalty and, in turn, your character. Do you still feel angry about it now? Do you regret the way you expressed that anger at the time, with your resignation letter saying some of the women in the cabinet were “little more than window dressing”, but also in releasing it at the time of the Prime Minister’s press conference?
First of all, where people use the word anger, I’d say I was asserting my point of view. I wanted to get out the truth about why I’d resigned, rather than allow others to spin it. The first point I was making was about how exclusive the cabinet was, in terms of who was really party to the real discussions. And the second point was about this whole concept of having people in the cabinet who weren’t full cabinet members, with some people attending all meetings, and some others attending only some cabinet meetings. That concerned me, because it did seem to be an artificial way of projecting an image of inclusion, when actually when it came down to it, it was anything but.

Are you talking about a gender divide?
Yes. You’ve only got to look at where people were to see that women were predominantly in less than full cabinet status positions. On the surface, you could say there were a certain number of women in the cabinet, but actually of those women, most were not full cabinet members. That was my view on it, though others may take a different view. After my resignation and others’ one of the things the Prime Minster said was about the need to be more inclusive, not just within the cabinet, but with ministerial ranks, and beyond that.

And something else you touched on in your letter, and that you’ve touched on already today, is this sense that you and other people around you were briefed against…
Oh God, yes. Maybe some people say we should grow up and be tough but I don’t think politics should be like that. I’ve never briefed against colleagues or been one of those people who tells reporters to quote me as “a senior source” or “one Minister said” . But certainly in the last couple of years, those types of briefings have occurred more and more, and they happened to me. There was a story the September before last that was covered in a Scottish newspaper about me being a stalking horse. It was an absolutely ridiculous story. But because of some people I know in the PLP – like Siobhan McDonagh and Joan Ryan, who had also made their views known – people thought I was also part of that. The problem is that I ended up always watching my back, trying to get on with the job, whilst other people were putting lies out there, quite nasty lies, too.

You mention some of your friends. The group was labelled Women Against Gordon, or WAGs…
Siobhan and Joan weren’t actually. What happened is that Tessa Jowell, Ruth Kelly, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and myself decided we would get together for a meal occasionally. I’m not talking about every four weeks, because it was difficult for us all to find the time; often the meetings would be months apart. And we used to rotate it amongst ourselves – each time it would be someone’s turn to cook or get the takeaway…

In one of your homes…?
It was always in one of our homes. We’d just get together – and I don’t want to be too stereotypical about it – but we’d just get together, have gossip, have a chat…

Can you see how that might look if you’re a vulnerable Prime Minister with a propensity for paranoia?
Well, I don’t know what it is about women, or when women get together in groups; we obviously become “dangerous”. But I don’t know. What I find bizarre about this is that we weren’t being secretive about it, and I can’t recall that our dinners together were ever followed by horrible things about our colleagues in the press. We weren’t plotting or briefing or colluding. The first time the whole thing emerged in the press about this “Women Against Gordon” group meeting together for dinner was after we had a meal with Jacqui as Home Secretary. I joked with her about it afterwards, because she was meant to be the one with the top security! But I have this sense that people look for conspiracies, they look for plots, and then try to flush people out or unnerve people. But this briefing is a complete distraction from the job we have to get on with.

Have your shared experiences over the summer brought you further together?
Yes, and we’re all still friends. Obviously Tessa’s still in the cabinet, but she’s still a friend too. But even beyond that group, we also all have other friends, both male and female, in the PLP and beyond. I do find it interesting that male networks operate all the time, and often I have to say with a much more calculating purpose – certainly in politics. If you look at the men in some companies, some are members of golf clubs and that’s where deals are done. In politics, it’s the same story. If that happens amongst women in politics, people think it’s a plot, when it’s really just the media looking for something interesting to report. But I have to say, I don’t think our dinners would have been reported unless people close to Gordon – and I’m not saying Gordon himself – were actually fuelling it.

Did you discuss with them the Observer shoot you did earlier in the year and is that something that in hindsight you regretted doing?
(Laughs) I don’t regret it at all.

Can you see how the photos might have undermined your argument about women being window-dressing…?
No, I can’t actually. I can see on one level how they were brought together. It was an Observer Woman magazine; the shoot was about high street fashion and I’d also done an in-depth profile interview. I was concerned about doing a shoot in clothes that might have been completely unaffordable to the average woman. But it wasn’t like that. My point with the window-dressing phrase was about having a cabinet in which women seemingly had parity in numbers, when the reality was that those women’s statuses were below those of the majority of the men. Let’s not kid ourselves, when you’re around that table, you know where you are in the pecking order. Everyone was sat round that cabinet table in their order of importance, and I and others were right down at the end of the table. I’m not saying you couldn’t talk. I did contribute when I was there. But the thing that irritated me was that as Europe Minister, seeing my name appear on a Number 10 list of members of the cabinet made me feel like a bit of a fraud, since I wasn’t being asked to attend. That’s what I call window-dressing. As for the photo shoot, no I don’t regret it. It’s discussed a lot, and lots of people got angry about it, but I have to say I’ve had a lot of correspondence from women from all walks of life who have said they never thought they could be a politician and they never thought politicians were interested in anything other than politics the whole time. So if it helped to reach out, then that’s a good thing.

You’ve been critical of the way that European election campaign was run, and you’ve said Labour’s voice on Europe hasn’t been strong enough. How do you frame talking about those things in a country that is essentially a Euro-sceptic one?
I wrote an article shortly after the European elections about this. One thing I became really aware of when I became Europe minister is that we have had a constant change of ministers in that role; what are we up to now, 12, 13? We’ve had two even since I resigned. I don’t think that constant change is helpful. It’s not just down to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deliver a positive European voice; it really does have to involve every other department of government. When I was Home Office minister, for example, I was also Europe minister. I was out in Europe every six weeks at meetings and I did that for two years. Having started off as the new girl at the beginning, the networks and relationships I eventually developed were really important. But if you keep changing people, that gets lost. And although quite clearly Labour is very pro-European, we have been guilty on occasion of taking credit on a national basis when things work well and blaming Europe when things don’t work well.

Glenis Willmott said the same thing when I interviewed her…
And I completely empathise with Glenis’ frustration on this. The problem is that when you’re dealing with a public that is instinctively cynical about the EU – including in our own movement – you need a consistency of message over a long period of time. One of the things I found frustrating was how difficult it was across government to pull together the really good examples of where our relationship with Europe was delivering in our communities, whether it’s on more jobs or more investment. We didn’t have a profile on a regional or even a sub-regional basis, or different types of case studies on firms that actually wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for investment from Europe. And again, across government departments where Europe isn’t their first order agenda, they sometimes produce press releases that are negative when they needn’t be, when actually there’s a great deal there that’s very positive for us. The problem is the lack of coordination across all of those departments to support each other and to give a better narrative about how Europe works for us. Certainly in the short time I was there – and Glenis and other colleagues were very helpful on this – the challenge was thinking of how to see the wood for the trees on all the things Europe is doing, to see what counts, on jobs and employment and skills during the recession, for instance. So I set my task working with colleagues in other departments and going out and seeing for myself around the country just where European jobs were being delivered. When it comes to climate change, yes it’s about getting the deal in Europe, but I also tried to find out how we are greening the economy up and down the country and what that means for people who might have jobs linked to reducing emissions. It’s about saying, it’s not just about the polar bears, it is also about jobs and reducing your energy bills; it’s about security and safety and the fact that the European arrest warrant has meant people who have committed crimes against people in this country can now be brought back to face justice; it’s about the fact that people can now go on holiday in the European Union and get access to healthcare without worrying about the sort of insurance issues we had years ago. Sometimes it seems you can lose sight of all those very important issues that connect with people in their jobs and in their families, and instead make Europe more complicated than it needs to be.

Moving onto the general election, do you think Labour can win?
Yes I do. I think it’s a huge challenge for us at the moment because obviously the polls haven’t been good for quite a while now, for the last few years in fact. I actually think we’ll start seeing a honing of what the parties have to offer and when that starts happening people will ask how those choices directly affect them, and they’ll look at the trade-off and the choices. From what I understand from the polling, even though the Tories are in front, it isn’t dramatic in terms of them conclusively winning the election. A few percentage points here and there will make all the difference. It’s going to be a challenge and I think we’re going to have to fight with everything we’ve got, but actually there’s everything still to play for. The way Cameron has played the whole Lisbon Treaty agenda, for example, I think says quite a lot about his approach to his politics and to his party, and how he tries to fool the public about where he stands on issues. Part of our job is to expose his approach in other areas of policy as well and to ask is what you see really what you get with Cameron…

Do you think Labour win the election under Gordon Brown?
Yes, I do, but we are not the bookies’ favourites.

Do you think a later election – with people perhaps seeing the benefits of a potential economic upturn – would strengthen Labour’s position?
Anything in the weeks and months ahead that shows progress on the economy will be helpful. But we have to be careful not to oversell any shifts in the economy. I’m not an economist, but when I hear various experts saying that technically we can see we’re coming out of recession, that doesn’t necessarily read across into people’s lives on the ground, because the real changes in the economy out there and how people feel about it takes a long time; there’s a lag between the technical signal and the real impact. What’s crucial is that we’re seen to be doing whatever we can do as a government to encourage that upturn, and that where we’re using our spending power we’re getting results in a way that is transferable for people to recognise in their lives. In terms of dealing with the Tories and their cutting agenda, that’s a ridiculous thing to do when we are still in a recession; even once we’ve technically come out of recession, everybody needs to be aware of that lag between the signs and the real terms. But it’s about being seen as sincere and thoughtful and delivering, while also being mindful that it’s still a difficult time for people.

You were formerly Housing minister, and you said council tenants should be compelled to actively seek work as a condition of their tenancy. Do you still stand by that? Do you think that’s a viable option even in recession? Shouldn’t we prioritise building more new houses?
Well, I do believe we need to build more houses, but I actually think in a recession as at any other time, focussing and supporting people’s ability to get into the workplace is equally important. Wouldn’t it be awful if we decided during a recession that we’re not going to talk about getting people into jobs anymore? Then, all of a sudden, the jobs would be there but the skills wouldn’t be there to fill them.

So you think your Housing policy is fundamentally a Labour policy, one which seeks to put people into jobs. A lot of people might say it’s taking welfare away from people…
How can a party have an ambition of full employment and then not want to encourage most people to be able to get into work? I believe work is good, not just for the pay you get but also for people contributing to the community. Of course, there are times in people’s lives when they won’t be able to work and the welfare state should be there as a safety net, and for some people work may be impossible. But if we don’t have a society where our expectation is that during a working life the vast majority of people should be in work, then I wonder about what sort of society we do want. Work is about self-sufficiency, it’s about taking control, it’s about health benefits. It’s also important that children grow up in a household where work is a feature. Fortunately, most people do want to have support to do that. I think it’s part of the social contract we have about how the state should be there to help when you most need it, when you’ve been dealt a blow. But in a fairness agenda, it’s also about what you put back in. There are hard working people out there, working class people and middle class people, who often feel squeezed between those who are very rich and who can ride out any economic situation, and those who they don’t feel are making a contribution. That’s important not to lose sight of.

When the Labour Party was formed, one of the big issues was employment and what that brought to people, both financially and emotionally in terms of people’s lives and their control over it. When I was employment minister I had the opportunity to look at some mapping where there were real pockets of unemployment, not just in one generation but from one generation to another. You could pinpoint council estates in London where unemployment was very, very high, but where it had been inherited from one generation to another. I said to officials, what are we doing here? It’s a situation whereby we’re giving people who are on one level fortunate enough to get social housing when there’s a queue of people who need it, but somehow or another, we’re not using that security of a protected rent and a roof over their head to lift them up. The other striking thing was the number of 18-24 year olds who’d got access to a one bedroom flat but where the unemployment rates were 80%, So we’re talking about young people who were never going to work and seemingly work wasn’t going to be part of their future. So I think it was and I think it’s still the right question in addressing worklessness.

Do you think that having been raised by a single mother and being a single mother for a time yourself has impacted on your politics?
I think your personal background does inform the way you think about things. For me growing up, work and what it gave you and your future life chances was very important, and that has always been very important to me. When I found myself on my own, with two children under two, and I was on benefits, getting back into work – and it didn’t matter what that job was – was crucial for my life-structure. (At one point, applied for a job at Woolworths and was turned down). Going to work was about me being independent, and not just dependent on benefits. But it’s also about not getting sucked into a trap where after so many years you just don’t feel confident about getting back in the workplace. When I’ve talked to lone parents who have been helped back into work, often they’ve told me that they’ve got themselves into a rut. They might have financial burdens, but more often than not they’d just lack social confidence about work choices. When we introduced the policy where you have to go to an interview to talk about work prospects, these people said just having someone give them a prod and forcing them to have that conversation gave them the wake up call they needed about what they want out of life for myself and my children. So for all those voices saying these reforms are terrible, they should listen to the people whose lives have been transformed.

What about yourself and your working choices now? This must have been one of the most interesting years of your life, but at the same time many of your Blairite colleagues have announced their intention to leave Parliament – John Hutton, Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers. Have you considered stepping down?
No I haven’t considered stepping down. For me, being a constituency MP has always been my bedrock in terms of my politics and I intend to do what I can to hopefully get the support of people in Don Valley to elect me again, but also to hopefully carry on with Labour in government. Life is about constant change and there’s always another challenge around the corner. One of the things that first attracted me to the Labour Party was recognising that we can change opportunities for the better, but it’s also about never being satisfied. So even if we’ve got more young people getting more out of education than we did before 1997, then there are still more young people to focus on. The Health Service will constantly need to improve as drugs and technologies change and as we change as well. So it’s never over; that won’t change. In terms of other people leaving, that’s always been the case, in 2001 and 2005, too. Yes, there are people I know who are leaving, but I don’t feel let down by that. They’re making choices about themselves, and they their reasons for stepping down. I’m still here to fight the good fight and contribute to getting Labour elected. And let’s not forget that there are good new people coming through, and every party has to reenergize itself; there are a few out there who are on that same wavelength, so I still feel comfortable.

In 2010 if we win the election under Gordon Brown, would you consider rejoining the government? And if Labour loses, would you like to join a potential shadow cabinet under a different leader?
I’ll wait to be asked! I wouldn’t turn round and say I wouldn’t, to either of those questions. But what I’m not spending my time doing is thinking about where I’m going to position myself for after the election. Other people can do that. I won’t be. But what I want to show is that as an MP I do the best job I can. Not being a minister gives me more scope and time to talk about other issues that I’m keen to contribute to, whether it’s housing or welfare reform or, recently, the childcare vouchers debate. It’s always easy to do one thing and then look immediately to the next thing down the road, and I’m sure there are lots of dinner parties around the country obsessing about what might happen and who might be in a fantasy cabinet or shadow cabinet. That’s all good fun, but the only thing to think about really is that we’re in the here and now and we have a task on our hands, with a reinvigorated opposition with the longest serving Tory leader we’ve had for 13 years…

And he’s doing a good job…
And he is pressing some of the right buttons. I don’t think people are completely convinced by him or some of his team; I think there are big doubts and question marks. But we can’t underestimate the opposition and we have to be focussed on that task rather than what happens later on.

Except maybe some tap dancing?
Well, I feel a bit of a fraud about that because in the last year or so we’ve had to stop having classes because it was getting really difficult to get everyone together. That’ll be another item on the list for discussion, post a general election.

So Housing, Welfare Reform and tap!
Yeah, or maybe we’ll go into something else; the Tango or Salsa.

Are you any good?
Er… One of the reasons we started it is that you don’t have to be good to enjoy it. You are so focussed on trying to get your feet in the right place at the right time that any other worries – personal, political or whatever – go out of your mind. So when we started this a few years back it was purely for relaxation and exercise. Then there was this Macmillan Palace of Varieties, which raises money for Macmillan each year, and we were encouraged to take part and do some routines for that. In terms of how good we are compared to other dancing troupes, not that good. But compared to some of the acts at the Palace of Varieties, which included other MPs, we were definitely in the top three! I remember once in the middle of a lesson we had to leave the lesson for a division. We were crossing from the gym and laughing, thinking how embarrassing it was…

Did you have special uniforms on?
No, just trackies…

And tap shoes, walking across the old stone floors of Parliament…?
Yeah, clunking away. But the interesting thing about that was that one of the tabloids had a diary piece about how we must’ve been drunk because we were laughing: ” a group of drunk Labour women were seen going to the division”. Of course, none of us had touched had a drop, but it’s another example of how when women get together there are often negative inferences made. But, no, the tap has been good and close relationships came out of it. Hopefully after the next general election, we’ll revitalise it.