Caroline Flint, widely seen as the pin-up girl of British politics, was last week given the task of shadowing communities minister Eric Pickles by Labour’s newly installed leader, Ed Miliband.
Like many of those voted into the new shadow cabinet by the party, Flint had backed Ed’s older brother, David, in Labour’s leadership battle.
She is now among 13 women at Labour’s top table and heads a shadow Communities and Local Government team made up of MPs including former trade unionist Jack Dromey.
The 49-year-old Flint first entered the Commons in 1997 as one of the “Blair babes”. The MP for Don Valley had previously worked as an equal opportunities officer for Lambeth council and as a senior researcher and political officer for trade union GMB.
Her first front-bench role saw her serve a brief, but controversial, spell as housing minister, between January and October 2008.
In the property world, Flint is perhaps best known for being responsible for the eco-towns project in 2008. Local council leaders were furious that Flint was preparing to bypass the normal planning process to ensure that as many as 10 eco-towns were built, each with up to 20,000 homes.
The current coalition government is expected to scrap the eco-town projects as part of its Comprehensive Spending Review when it is published next week.
Flint is renowned among political photographers for turning the walk to Downing Street for cabinet meetings into her private catwalk show. During one such moment in May 2008 she inadvertently revealed grim forecasts for the future of house prices when she was photographed with her briefing papers clearly visible inside a transparent plastic folder.
Close inspection revealed that the document read: “We can’t tell how bad it will get.”
Later that year, she drew further criticism after stating in a TV interview that it had been “obvious all over the media for several years that property is overvalued”.
She was moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Labour’s October 2008 reshuffle, becoming minister of state for Europe.
Further embarrassment came Flint’s way in March 2009 when she admitted that she had not read the Lisbon Treaty, a document which codifies the rules of the European Union. This admission was seen as being somewhat of an oversight, given that her ministerial responsibilities included overseeing the introduction of the treaty.
Flint caused unrest in Downing Street after her decision to pose for a photoshoot in Observer Woman magazine. She commented at the time that her looks were a double-edged sword and that male colleagues would not be judged in the same way.
Flint quit the front bench in June 2009 after accusing then-prime minister Gordon Brown of regarding her and other senior women as “female window dressing”.
Her new role is certainly not that.
nick.whitten@estatesgazette.com
