Were Allegra’s tears a crying shame for working women?

YES: She has set back our cause by a century

ALLeGrA STRATTON, holding what seemed to be a shopping list, walked out of her pale blue North London front door on Wednesday night dressed as if for a quick trip to Tesco. What else could possibly explain the unkempt appearance of this highly polished professional and adviser to the Prime Minister, now dressed in a puffer coat, Fair Isle sweater (seen better days) and with little make-up and no hairdo?

But then she stopped in front of a TV camera and an unforgiving close-up revealed that her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. her skin was flushed and blotchy. She must have been crying for

hours. And then, as she read from the notes in her hand, the crying began all over again.

Visibly distressed, Allegra began to apologise profusely for her part

in a mock Press conference last year in which she faced questions about a Downing Street Christmas party that may or may not have happened. ‘I will regret those remarks for the rest of my days… I am truly sorry,’ she faltered, adding that she was offering the PM her resignation.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not because a governmental figure had finally done the decent thing — although that has been a rarity of late — but because she was

doing so with tears openly streaming down her face.

Once feted for her communication skills, Allegra was struggling to get her words out.

And although it would have been the last thing on her mind, I believe her performance has taken working women back a century, to the days before we even had the vote.

In all my years as a professional working in the highly pressurised TV industry — I have been a producer for ITV, BBC and Channel 4, and made a documentary about Margaret Thatcher — I have never seen behaviour like this before. And it’s shocking.

MuCh as I was often tempted when things went wrong on the studio floor — and believe me they did — I never cried in public. Far better to be blamed for being aggressive or labelled a ‘difficult woman’ — a badge that’s increasingly worn with pride — than to dissolve in self-pitying tears.

To do so is a betrayal of everything women have worked for in our bid to be taken seriously in the workplace. And when that workplace is the Palace of

Westminster, I’m sorry to say, the betrayal is all the greater.

I should know, for while juggling my work in TV, I also had a bird’seye view of the Westminster

cauldron. Married for 45 years to Austin Mitchell, the late MP for Grimsby, I saw first-hand how women fought for their place at the table. Westminster women know perhaps better than anyone else how carefully they have to tread: one wrong step and you’ll set the cause back decades was what we all believed.

We felt that if we were going to have any chance of beating the boys at their own game then tears and breakdowns and guilttrips were for the ladies’ room or behind closed doors at home.

Thankfully, since then, the part played by women at Westminster has steadily grown and improved over the past few decades.

Announcing her intention to stand down as MP for Camberwell

and Peckham this week, harriet harman said there were only ten female Labour MPs when she joined the Commons in 1982. Now it’s pretty much equal numbers. The need for Labour’s all-women shortlists is a thing of the past.

In the world of media, too, where Allegra was formerly editor of ITV news, women find themselves in much more powerful and influential positions.

No longer confined to being the pretty face in front of the camera, female editors and channel controllers rule the airwaves — and never with a hair out of place.

Only last week Alex Mahon, boss of Channel 4, defended her organisation against claims of Left-wing bias while dressed in a ballgown and stilettos.

So what went so wrong for Allegra Stratton? And can she ever come back from this?

The only virtue of her appearance, so vulnerable and needy at her own front door, can be to act as a warning signal to talented young women headed for the world of politics.

Namely, that however stellar your career might be, we are not yet in a place where big girls can cry and get away with it.