To put Burnham's remarks into fuller context, the Times parliamentary sketchwriter last week wrote that "there is a rumour that David Davis resigned after being bewitched by Shami. She denied this, but then she would." Bewitched! Andy Burnham followed this up with his comments to Progress magazine about "late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls".
The objections are entirely connected. Such comments and insinuations would not happen if Shami Chakrabarti was a man. Dominic Lawson sums it up: "this sort of remark also carries the crude and condescending meaning that it is not through her articulate advocacy that Ms Chakrabarti, a Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple and a former Home Office lawyer, has mobilised political opposition to 42-day detention without charge – no, it's just because she's a babe." (The final paragraph of that commentary is well worth reading.)
New Labour may have pushed through 42 days by opening the chequebook for the DUP (perhaps less likely bedfellows for Labour than Liberty and David Davis) but they have not won the argument. Ergo, smears.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 02:10 pm (UTC)The objections are entirely connected. Such comments and insinuations would not happen if Shami Chakrabarti was a man. Dominic Lawson sums it up: "this sort of remark also carries the crude and condescending meaning that it is not through her articulate advocacy that Ms Chakrabarti, a Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple and a former Home Office lawyer, has mobilised political opposition to 42-day detention without charge – no, it's just because she's a babe." (The final paragraph of that commentary is well worth reading.)
New Labour may have pushed through 42 days by opening the chequebook for the DUP (perhaps less likely bedfellows for Labour than Liberty and David Davis) but they have not won the argument. Ergo, smears.