`Labour women are zombies'

THE SOCIALITE Carla Powell has turned on Labour's women MPs with a vengeance, dismissing the so-called "Blair babes" as "in danger of becoming zombies" who were even more loyal to their leader than the party's men.

Lady Powell, a friend of Peter Mandelson, who used to lodge in her Notting Hill house, has attacked the Blair Government as "too authoritarian" and "too much influenced by money."

The extrovert wife of Lord Powell, who as Charles Powell was Margaret Thatcher's foreign affairs adviser, has had eclectic political tastes. She fell out with Baroness Thatcher, saw John Major as too wimpish on Europe and then joined forces with her friend Sir James Goldsmith by backing his Referendum Party.

But she wanted Labour to win the 1997 general election and has other links with the Blair circle: one brother-in-law, Jonathan, is the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and another, Chris, is chairman of Labour's advertising agency, BMP DDB Needham.

Lady Powell revealed her disenchantment with the Labour Government and its MPs in a letter to this weekend's edition of The Spectator. "Labour MPs are too well drilled. They are too scared of the party whips. They are terrified of being caught `off message'," she wrote.

"As a result they are in danger of becoming zombies, mere lobby fodder. I am sorry to say that women Labour MPs are even worse than the men in submitting to this kind of unthinking discipline." Lady Powell insisted that Labour MPs did not have to be unanimous on every issue.

"Still less do they have to suppress their own informed and cherished opinions for the sake of party unity or to suit the convenience of government.

She went on to accuse the Blair Government of planning to outlaw fox-hunting after receiving pounds 1m from an anti-hunting group before the last general election and pounds 100,000 since.

"I notice that money politics seems as rife now as in the past, with the rich anti-field sports lobby seemingly able to dictate government policy on fox-hunting.

"It is no use the Labour Party shaking free of the old financial ties to the trade unions, only in order to place itself under new obligations to any group in society which can make out a big cheque to party funds."

Labour figures reacted with scorn last night, saying that several high- calibre Labour women had been promoted by Mr Blair in last week's ministerial reshuffle. "She is eccentric," said one MP. "She doesn't know anything about Labour politics."

A Labour friend of Lady Powell said: "She is rarely in Britain nowadays, spending most of her time abroad, and seems completely out of touch with what is going on here."

n Ken Livingstone warned that he would become ill with depression and the skin disease psoriasis if Mr Blair blocked him from becoming Labour's candidate for Mayor of London. He told the New Statesman that he still hopes to become a minister.

"It would be just like Blair to block me from standing as mayor and then offer me a job in his government," he said. "Still, it might cure the psoriasis."