Harman excluded from Eagle bash

Two of Gordon Brown's most senior female ministers, Commons leader Harriet Harman (pictured) and Treasury minister Angela Eagle, are not doing their bit for Labour party unity, it seems. An icy relationship between the two women developed earlier this month when Harman decided to tell delegates at the TUC conference in Brighton that Eagle planned to marry her partner, trade unionist Maria Exall, in a gay civil ceremony. Tellingly, Harman (nickname: "Harperson") was conspicuous by her absence at a celebration Eagle arranged on Saturday at a venue in Manchester's gay Canal Street area on the first night of party conference.

Those in attendance included Foreign Secretary David Miliband's brother Ed, who is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Foreign Office minister Meg Munn, and Spencer Livermore, Gordon Brown's former director of political strategy. "It wasn't the fact that Harman talked about their wedding, but the fact she chose to do it in public before thousands of people who would have had no idea she was gay," says a source. "She will have a lot of work to do to get herself a wedding invite."

If the Manchester bash is anything to go by, the wedding will be an event worth attending. A source told the Daily Mail: "It was a very jolly evening. Angela had everyone laughing when she joked that their wedding list was available on the QVC shopping channel. Meg Munn got up to speak, but her words were drowned out by cheers and the music. I think they were playing It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls."