As Andy Burnham prepares to assume the premiership, he faces mounting pressure to confront Labour’s persistent “boys’ club” culture by guaranteeing women half of the senior positions in his first cabinet.
Despite maintaining more formal equality mechanisms than the Conservative Party, Labour has yet to elect a female leader. By contrast, the Conservatives have installed four women at the helm—Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, Liz Truss, and current leader Kemi Badenoch. Senior figures within Labour report that an informal male-dominated network continues to obstruct women’s advancement.
Veteran MP Harriet Harman recently urged outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer to appoint a woman as his effective deputy to “transform the political culture in government” regarding gender. “We need less ‘lads, lads, lads,’ and more diversity,” Labour MP Polly Billington told LBC radio earlier this month. Billington signaled deep frustration when questioned about speculation that Burnham might return former Foreign Secretary David Miliband to frontline politics. “I don’t really need to be organizing or advocating for a reunion of the Demon Eyes football club,” she remarked, referencing a 1998 team comprising a generation of Tony Blair-era advisers and future ministers.
Burnham and Miliband—who has resided in New York since 2013—are former Demon Eyes teammates. Other alumni include James Purnell, a former pensions minister reportedly under consideration for Burnham’s chief of staff, and Ed Balls, another former minister tipped for a potential return.
Deputy Party Leader Lucy Powell told The Guardian she had endured “unpleasant” briefings in Downing Street targeting senior female cabinet ministers, which she views as evidence of a “boys’ club” entrenched in the upper echelons of government.
‘Imbued with Power’
Women have made significant gains in parliamentary representation over the past three decades; prior to 1997, female lawmakers across all parties never exceeded 10 percent of MPs. Today, 266 women sit in the 650-seat Parliament. Labour accounts for 186 of these MPs, meaning women constitute 46 percent of the parliamentary party. A comparable proportion currently hold cabinet posts, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Yet a pervasive sentiment remains that women are excluded from the levers of real power. The Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party has written to Burnham demanding a 50:50 gender balance in both the cabinet and the Number 10 operation, according to media reports. “We are asking you to demonstrate this change from day one and address the toxicity and misogyny within our own party and government,” the draft letter stated, per the BBC.
Former minister Jess Phillips told LBC television that her meeting with Burnham conveyed the message that representation alone is insufficient. “Giving someone a job … and then just ignoring them when they speak will not work,” she said. “They have to be imbued with power. Decisions have to be made with women in the room, and those women have to be able to feel that they can speak against the pervading power if that power is a man.” Burnham has not yet publicly responded to the demands.
‘Watershed’
Joni Lovenduski, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London, described Labour’s failure to elect a female leader as puzzling, given the party’s early adoption of all-women shortlists in 1993—a mechanism the Conservatives rejected. She attributes the gap to the party historically “prioritizing class” over gender. Lovenduski added that the culture of Number 10 has historically been “laddish and misogynistic,” irrespective of the party in power.
Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and an expert on women’s political representation, expressed hope that Burnham’s administration could mark a “watershed” moment. “It is a moment for potential change because you have got an incoming prime minister who is himself critical of some of the ways of working at Westminster,” she said.
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