Afternoon:
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She's very odd, Louise Mensch. Sharp, gifted, uncommonly pretty and prone to putting her elegantly shod foot in it. Having graced Tatler magazine, she has now moved on to a GQ poster shoot, attired like a sexed-up Holly Golightly in leather-fronted skirt, while complaining that discussion about her appearance had "obscured" her political statements.
Nothing is dafter than MPs playing the glamour game and then complaining about not being taken seriously. Should they be smartly dressed? Of course: this is a job that means representing the public and we can expect to be aggrieved if they turn up on TV in gardening jeans.
Ed Miliband just sounds pitiful saying he would rather wear big glasses and nasty jumpers than the dapper suit leadership demands. If Mr Miliband favours such a look, he could stay where many feel he belongs: in Left-liberal academia. But if he wants to win in a competitive arena where impressions count and presence is important, he will have to put away his inner anorak.
At the same time, it is always a road to career ruin to mistake brash exposure with impact.
Theresa May's truly awful shoes did get a lot of coverage. But Ms May has also confounded critics who thought she was lightweight by hanging on to a difficult job without too many clangers. In her good-humoured but straightforward demeanour, she is a good advertisement for women in high places.
Ms Mensch, au contraire, is making the same error as Labour's Caroline Flint, the Don Valley diva. Ms Flint once appeared in a photoshoot swaddled in orange silk, which is a good look for Strictly contestants but not wannabe ministers.
The other problem with taking the Sarah Palin route and mistaking fame with good political fortune is that it leads you, like Ms Mensch, to beg publicly for promotion, despite having only just been elected. Not much of her concern comes through for her constituents, only for her career.
"What do I have to do to get promoted over here?" she says. "Am I being disloyal?" (No, just annoying.) And finally: "I need to sit down with my whip and say, 'What do I have to do?'"
Oh, where to start? By dropping the lofty tone of presumption, perhaps? Or by waiting until Mr Cameron actually holds a reshuffle? So far, he has promoted only a couple of women ahead of many very able young men from the 2010 intake. Ms Mensch's complaint seems to be that it is not her.
She did herself no favours by leaving a session cross-questioning James Murdoch at lunchtime on a key date for her committee, citing the need to pick her children up from school. Women who want to play big roles in public life cannot at the same time grandstand about their home priorities.
I recently sat down to dinner with a bunch of the new Tory intake of women. They were fun, hard-working, well turned-out and more varied than you might suppose. Many were state school-educated and had come from unglossy backgrounds. I was struck by their utter seriousness about what they do, and left hoping that Mr Cameron changes the face of his ministerial team by giving them a real shout at power. But they won't get there by mistaking attention-seeking for competence. And neither should they.
