Keir Starmer must quell concerns about a “boys club” in Downing Street by appointing a woman in a senior role to crack down on discrimination and turbocharge efforts to end misogyny, the party’s female MPs have told him.
The calls were lead by the Labour veteran Harriet Harman, the former Labour minister who now holds the post of the UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls, who demanded the Prime Minister appoint a woman to the heart of Downing Street.
She was speaking to The i Paper after Starmer met with Labour’s women MPs and peers in the House of Commons, where they called on him to change the culture of his No 10 operation.
Their anger follows two scandals involving Labour peers which have put Starmer under pressure over his leadership and judgement.
On Monday Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on him to quit in the wake of the row over former US ambassador Peter Mandelson’s links to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
And on Tuesday The i Paper revealed Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s former communications chief, had been stripped of the Labour whip days after being elevated to the House of Lords despite having campaigned for a paedophile councillor while under was charged but before he was convicted.
Cool response for the Prime Minister
Starmer was told to make tackling misogyny a key government “mission” at his meeting with women MPs, during which he apologised for his government’s appointment of Mandelson as US Ambassador.
The meeting came after a difficult Prime Minister’s Questions, where Starmer was accused by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch of prioritising his “Downing Street boys’ club” over women’s voices in his party.
During his meeting with MPs Starmer was met with a cool response, with none of the usual applause and desk-banging that often welcomes leaders into meetings of the Parliamentary Party.
Sources described the mood as muted, with a lot of anger and upset about how concerns over the appointments of Doyle to the Lords and Mandelson as ambassador had been handled, and a genuine feeling of a “woman problem” in the leadership’s approach.
One MP said women in the party were particularly irritated that Doyle had continued to campaign for Sean Morton despite him being an independent candidate and not running for Labour – something that is usually not permitted.
“Never mind the disgusting paedophile stuff. It’s one rule for the men and another for the women. He should never have appointed Doyle to the Lords. It all adds up to one word and that word is ‘misogyny,” they said.
Sources in the room on Wednesday suggested the prime minister was “not there to mainsplain” and had “mainly come to listen”, but that it’s “too early to say” whether there will be a culture change in No 10.
One source said the Prime Minister “knows he has got to end the boys club” he has been criticised for presiding over.
Harman calls for ‘culture change’
Harriet Harman, a former deputy Labour leader and minister in Tony Blair’s government, demanded the PM fill the vacant office of First Secretary of State with “a woman whose sole task is to drive culture change through every part of the government”.
First Secretary of State – a post once held by Mandelson – is a senior cabinet position that is not always filled, allowing an expansive likened to Deputy Prime Minister.
“I think it would be a very practical thing to do in terms of the machinery of government, because changing culture is hard and you have to do it from the top,” Harman told The i Paper.
“But also it would send a massive signal because to take that job, which was last occupied by Peter Mandelson, and give it to a woman to clear up the absolute mess that he has made in the party, would be very powerful.”
There are suggestions that recently-elected Deputy Leader of the party, Lucy Powell – who flanked the Prime Minister alongside his female advisors at the meeting – could be a good fit for the role.
Harman said there was a desire to see “leadership” from senior men in government to set an example for how male colleagues should be behaving.
She argued the focus tackling “misogyny, discrimination and the marginalisation of women” should be the Labour government’s “sixth mission” (on top of the five missions in the party’s manifesto which included growing the economy and reforming the NHS). She added the PM was receptive to the idea and “was going to think about” the proposal.
Labour MP Natalie Fleet also demanded a public inquiry into the hundreds of victims of the Mohamed Al Fayed scandal and requested Starmer meet the women involved. Multiple women have accused the late Harrods boss of rape and sexual assault.
‘He opened up and apologised’
Government sources also suggested the Prime Minister should put rocket boosters underneath his Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, to show he is serious about building trust.
And MPs said the recommendations of the 2022 Martin Forde report into the running of the Labour party, which warned of a culture of sexism, should be implemented.
Wednesday’s meeting was the second time this week the Prime Minister had faced the ire of Labour’s women.
At a 45-minute meeting of the women’s PLP executive in Downing Street that had taken place on Monday at 2pm Starmer apologised to the dozen or so invited in to see him, one of those present told The i Paper.
“We were quite surprised the meeting went ahead because Anas had just (called on him to resign) but it did.
“He opened up and apologised. Not just for Mandelson and Doyle but for not being good enough in general. VAWG came up a lot. We told him he outsourced everything but everything is done in his name but he can’t leave all the decisions to others,” one attendee told The i Paper.
The source backed calls to remove Doyle from the upper chamber and strip him of his peerage. “When we heard he’d been appointed we all thought ‘Oh my Gosh he can’t go in’ we knew it would cause trouble and it has. They have got to get Doyle out of the Lords. He should do the right thing and resign.”
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