Glenys steps up

Amid the Cabinet reshuffle, we learn the Europe Minister Caroline Flint has resigned, after failing to be promoted to Health Secretary, a position which she has apparently been coveting.

Iain Dale has the full text of her resignation letter, in which she accuses Gordon Brown of running a 'two-tier Government', and laments her lack of invitations to Cabinet meetings, saying she has been "only invited once since October and not to a single political Cabinet - not even the one held a few weeks before the European elections."

Not to worry Caroline, maybe the Prime Minister just needed briefing on the Lisbon Treaty, and you're not exactly qualified for that.

And so we learn that the new Europe Minister is to be the serial junketeer Welsh MEP Glenys Kinnock, wife of former Labour leader and EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock.

Unable to find anyone currently serving in Parliament to fit the position, Brown will elevate Glenys Kinnock to the House of Lords to take over.

Our recent ranking of MEPs gives us some easy-access info on the new Europe Minister.

Glenys Kinnock at a glance:

In a vote in the European Parliament in February last year, Glenys voted against an amendment which asked that the European Parliament "undertake to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland" on the Lisbon Treaty.

She has also chosen to opt into the highly controversial and dubious second pension scheme (see here, here and here) and in 2005, Glenys Kinnock was among those MEPs that vetoed a proposal which would have ensured that MEPs' contributions to the second pension scheme could no longer be paid out of MEPs' allowances, but would have had to come out of their own pockets.

Glenys did not do particularly well in our recent ranking of MEPs, coming 65th out of the 78 UK MEPs. However, she was not present for 5 key votes which we used in our league table... probably off on a 'fact-finding' mission somewhere.

Glenys is the most well-travelled of all UK MEPs, clocking up almost 130,000 air miles over the past five years, enough to travel around the world five times. Some of these included 'fact-finding' missions to the Seychelles, and trips to the Caribbean in May this year.