News

FORTUNES: Dawn Butler

Brent MP Dawn Butler insists that her boss, the Prime Minister is no bully. Despite what the media have been saying, "He's a good bloke," she told me on Colourtelly's Any Black Questions last Sunday, the day the news broke that Gordon Brown was being accused of being the ‘tyrant’ of Downing Street.

Dawn insists that she wouldn't be in the Prime Minister's government if there was any suggestion of bullying. As the first black woman MP in a British cabinet, she has a lot to live up to. She's had to break through the glass ceiling and can't let the sisters down. But on the other hand, the carries the burden of history on her shoulders and if she were to resign over a harsh word or two from her boss it wouldn't look good would it? We would accuse her of not being able to withstand the heat and the pressure. Because we all know that when the going gets tough, the tough get going (ask Billy Ocean if you don't believe me).

I suppose being a government minister is like being married. Dawn doesn't quite see it like that, although she says the Prime Minister jokingly suggested that she was in Downing Street so much she might as well get a room there. Certainly when you are offered a job as a minister in the government you have to accept certain vows - to love, honour and obey your boss - the prime minister. In sickness and in health, until an election do you part.

You are umbilically tied to one another. You may divorce the Prime Minister as Clare Short did when she resigned from the government over the war in Iraq, but even that separation is a reminder of the union that once was.

So too Dawn Butler has to remember when she hitches her fortunes so tightly to that of Gordon Brown that she goes up with him and she goes down with him. When you jump the broom, you can't unjump the broom.

As Ashley Cole will discover if the whole sorry mess of his relationship ends up in the divorce courts. Not only may his nickname ‘Cashley’ come to haunt him as the couple split up their joint fortune to the tune of their legal teams' cash registers (‘kerching!’), but his theoretical fortunes will always be linked to hers. He will forever be the former husband of Cheryl whatshername. She being the ‘nation's sweetheart’ he will always be cast as the ‘nation's villain’ in comparison.

Let this be a lesson to all you who take those marriage vows lightly. Whether in government or in matrimony - you live by the love, honour and obey - and you die by it too.

Published: 01 March 2010
Issue: 1412

site comments powered by Disqus