5 min read
As he prepares to address the women’s Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) on Wednesday afternoon, Keir Starmer is being urged to make the Peter Mandelson scandal a watershed moment in tackling a perceived boys’ club in his party.
The revelation that the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson as US ambassador despite being aware of his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein has triggered the most perilous period of his premiership so far. In the last few days, he has lost his chief of staff and director of communications, while on Monday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told him to resign.
The Mandelson affair has caused anger and frustration among Labour women in particular.
Labour had 190 women MPs elected at the 2024 general election, the largest number ever returned to the House of Commons by a single political party.
However, many women in the party believe that recent revelations over how Mandelson was appointed typify a deep-rooted misogyny within Labour, with former special adviser Baroness Ayesha Hazarika describing last week’s events as “shameful” for her party.
“I have never known rage and fury and devastation, particularly for female MPs, peers, councillors, party members, as I have over this last week,” she told Sky News at the weekend.
“This is a story about male power and a boys’ club… I’m afraid we have also seen a microcosm of that in politics, particularly Labour politics this week.”
The Starmer administration has faced accusations of being a boys’ club long before the Mandelson affair. Female Labour MPs, such as former transport secretary Louise Haigh, have complained about anonymous briefings targeting women in cabinet. At the same time, Downing Street has been accused of overlooking women to give senior jobs to men.
Seemingly recognising the strength of feeling, the Prime Minister is set to address the Women’s PLP on Wednesday afternoon.
PoliticsHome understands that Starmer has been having meetings with women across the party in recent days to listen to their concerns.
“I do think this is a real opportunity to make progress on misogyny in politics,” one Labour woman MP who preferred to remain anonymous told PoliticsHome.
Following the recent resignations of Morgan McSweeney and Tim Allan as Starmer’s chief of staff and director of communications, respectively, and the expected resignation of Chris Wormald as head of the civil service in the coming weeks, the Prime Minister’s latest government reset is seen as an opportunity to address this perceived problem.
Two women, Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, have succeeded McSweeney as Starmer’s joint chiefs of staff.
At the time of writing, Home Office permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo is expected to replace Wormald as the first female cabinet secretary.
Many Labour women would like to see Steph Driver return to Downing Street to lead the communications operation.
“It depends [on] who gets appointed as to whether the bully boys club improves,” the same MP quoted above added.
She continued: “The women in the PLP have made the right call on each [u-turn] and have privately expressed their concerns at each and every opportunity, and haven’t been to the press. And we have been seen as disloyal for doing so.”
The MP said putting experienced women “in the real positions of power” where they are “listened to” would help the government show it is properly tackling the Mandelson scandal.
Speaking to the wider PLP on Monday night, Starmer pledged to take a more inclusive approach to government, with No 10 having regularly been accused of paying too little attention to the views of backbench MPs in the 18 months it has been in power.
The soft-left Tribune group has called for a cabinet reshuffle to ensure the PM’s senior team better reflects the parliamentary party.
Speaking to PoliticsHome, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi said that moving forward, there “needs to be regular engagement and listening when female parliamentarians raise concerns”, adding “the mistakes of that boys’ network” had been exposed.
Referring to Mandelson’s history within the party, Eshalomi asked: “Would a woman who had been sacked twice still get appointed, still get an important job? As women, we are not afforded that.”
Speaking before the Women’s PLP meeting on Wednesday, Eshalomi said she would go along with “an open mind to listen to what [Starmer] has to say.”
Labour MP Emily Darlington, who is a campaigner for equality for women in Parliament, told PoliticsHome that the Epstein case had revealed “a culture around the rich and powerful men that get protected”, adding, “the closed men’s spaces in politics continue”.
“It controls who is promoted, who is put in place, and who has power within those networks. We are seeing those two scenarios, both of those things coming together.”
Labour women are also frustrated because the Mandelson scandal and subsequent debate about a boys’ club come at the same time as the government is bringing out a strategy for tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).
“In terms of the trust of women and girls up and down the country, we want them to believe us when we say it is a key priority for the government. It will fall on us as women parliamentarians to repair that [trust], said Eshalomi, the MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green.
Darlingon, the MP for Milton Keynes Central, said she wanted to see the PM and the government talk about VAWG more going forward.
“I would love to see him [Starmer] talking about this more, and this would be a good thing to come out of this scandal, especially for the victims of the biggest grooming and trafficking scandal of our age,” she told PoliticsHome.
