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A Right Westminster Gossip |
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Shami Chakrabarti, an Indian woman born in London of parents who came from Calcutta, did not take it lying down when a Labour cabinet minister more or less accused her of being intimately involved with a senior Tory MP. Chakrabarti, 39-year-old director of the civil rights group Liberty and a barrister by training, yesterday received a grovelling apology from Andy Burnham, the culture secretary.
She said last night that she was “grateful for Mr Burnham’s personal letter, which seems to show genuine regret for the distress that his remarks caused me and my family”. “These remarks coincided with a relentless campaign of Westminster gossip that could only have distracted from serious issues and discouraged young women from entering public life,” Chakrabarti said. |
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| Shami Chakraborty.- A woman scorned |
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As director of Liberty, she appears frequently on BBC television programmes and is remember the value of treating fellow human beings with dignity and respect,” Chakrabarti added in her statement last night. This effectively draws a line under the latest Westminster affair that wasn’t an affair. |
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David Davies
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Burnham, 38, one of the rising stars of the Labour Party and tipped one day to be its leader, had made the mistake of suggesting that Chakrabarti and the Tory shadow home secretary, David Davis, 59, shared intimate late night chit chats.
Chakrabarti, who has a son with her husband, an English barrister, reacted with fury when Burnham spoke casually in an interview in Progress magazine of Davis having “late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti”.
One conversation between Davis and Chakrabarti had indeed taken place after the former had decided to resign from Parliament in protest against Brown’s in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on what he considers a matter of principle. But according to Chakrabarti, this unlikely political alliance did not mean there was also a personal alliance, as Burnham appeared to be implying with his smear tactics. Burnham, coshed by women MPs from all sides, has now apologised to Chakrabarti who had sought one, not only on her own behalf but also that of Davis’s wife Doreen, presumably to make it absolutely clear there really wasn’t anything between her and the Tory shadow home secretary. |
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In his letter, a cowed Burnham insisted he was “not the kind of person who sets out to cause personal offence”, maintained his remarks had been misinterpreted and appealed to her to draw a line under the row. “I have been genuinely taken aback at an interpretation placed on my remarks by others that I did not intend,” wrote Burnham. “I can well understand how the coverage of my remarks and the reaction of others to them may have been distressing for you and your family.”
He went on: “I can say that the very last thing I set out to do was to cause any personal offence to you, your family or any other party. If that is what has happened by the misinter- pretation of my remarks, then I regret that. I do try to speak in a straightforward way and use humour where I can to make my political points and, though you may not agree, that was what I was trying to do here.”
He also said: “I do not accept that I have in any way ‘debased my offi ce of state’. Indeed, I think it is in the interests of democracy to preserve the liberty of politicians to speak about current issues and public fi gures in expressive language that is all part of the cut and thrust of political debate.” In his original remarks, Burnham had commented that he found something “very curious in the man who was — and still is I believe — an exponent of capital punishment, having late-night, hand-wringing, heart- melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti”.
Now, he wrote: “The point still stands and is this: that an exponent of the death penalty is, in my view, an improbable champion of the cause of civil liberties.” He said he had not scripted his thoughts and what appeared in Progress was “a spontaneous comment”.
He ended: “I trust I have now demonstrated I did not intend my remarks to be interpreted as an ‘attempted character assassination’ and that we can now draw a line under this matter.” He inserted a small rasogolla in the envelope by saying that, despite their differences over political issues, he had “the highest regard” for Chakrabarti. Good Bengali girl that she is, she has fallen for it. There will be no legal action. |
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