Labour’s women, frustrated that the next Labour prime minister will be another man, have put Andy Burnham on notice: don’t make the same mistakes as Sir Keir Starmer.
While Dame Margaret Beckett and peer Harriet Harman have briefly served as the interim Labour leaders and leaders of the opposition, the party has never had an elected female leader. By contrast the Conservatives, to Labour irritation, have had three female prime ministers and are currently led by Kemi Badenoch.
Burnham is expected to remove Chancellor Rachel Reeves from her position as the first ever woman in No 11, although Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is one of the contenders to replace her, alongside a raft of men. He’s also set to bring in New Labour cabinet ally James Purnell as his chief of staff. After Morgan McSweeney departed as No 10’s chief of staff, the position was shared by two women under Starmer, partly as a recognition that Labour’s women in Parliament had enough of what they described as the “boys’ club” culture that had sprung up in No 10.
That, they argue, resulted in structural misogyny, bullying, and the turning of a blind eye to reports of sexual harassment. Most egregiously Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson to the House of Lords and then as ambassador to Washington.
