November 19, 2009 6:49pm
Cathy Ashton is Europe’s new foreign policy supremo. Even friends are stunned that someone so low key could have been elevated to such a high profile job. To date she has served as EU trade commissioner, leader of the Lords, and as a junior justice and education minister. Here are 10 more details about her:
– She spent most of her early career working for Business in the Community, a charity backed by Prince Charles
– She quit as Tony Blair’s farming minister after four days in 2006. She refused to take on the job as a part-time adjunct to her post at the Department for Constitutional Affairs
– One of her best moments as Leader of the Lords came when Ireland voted against the Lisbon treaty. She had been astute enough to agree a position with Gordon Brown beforehand, so when the Irish result interrupted a Lords debate on Europe, she was able to rise to her feet immediately and give the treaty her full backing.
– She was an administrative secretary for CND between 1977 and 1979 (I wonder what her MI5 file says?) and was later elected a vice-chairwoman
– She is married to Peter Kellner, the left-leaning former journalist turned YouGov pollster
– She spends her weekends back at home in the UK and travels to Brussels on Monday mornings
– She is a big X Factor fan but only mentions enjoying the theatre in Who’s Who
– A full-size Dalek stands in the corner of her sitting room. It was a present from Peter
– Lord McNally is one of her most excitable admirers: “She has a very seductive manner,” he once told his peers. “Indeed, in my daydreams I sometimes think…of Antony and Cleopatra, with me as Antony—but she already has an Antony.”
– She shuns some accoutrements of the high life (”I don’t know any oligarchs. I don’t think I’ve ever been on anyone’s yacht.’) but she is not known to compromise on restaurants in Brussels
