PM Andy Burham: what next for women's (and children's) rights?

Indeed. However she can have different opinions to her kids.

She was thought men should not be in women's prisons here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0dyz4w6

As someone else said I think she is somewhere in the middle at least in public.

they are shady AF

I agree but what does ‘deniable’ mean in that sentence?

Sadly you’ll be disappointed. Shabana Mahmood retains her Home Office role and she has no truck with it.

they are shady AF.

Fascinating!

they also function as a rather effective deniable dirty tricks department of the Labour Party.

@SionnachRuadh I'm being stupid, but I don’t understand this sentence.

Some good appointments (Lou Haigh as CDL is promising); some not so inspiring (Angela Eagle at Defra? wtf?)

The most notable thing is how northern the cabinet now is, with London Labour being reduced to a rump; and one of the handful of London MPs is Miatta Fahnbulleh, whose deep knowledge of African politics has surely taught her that the coup leader needs to fill his government with allied clans from his home province.

(We keep hearing that Miatta's dad was foreign minister of Liberia, which is true, but leaves out the interesting stuff. He was foreign minister in the revolutionary regime of Samuel Doe that took power in 1980 and ousted (read: massacred) the African-American oligarchy that had ruled since independence in 1847. When the Doe regime collapsed in chaos, Fahnbulleh senior fled to London where he hung out in left wing exile circles, occasionally returning to Liberia to run for president. His left wingery seems to have been strictly a London thing. This is probably the most interesting backstory of any current Labour MP.)

Ellie Reeves is Attorney General.

Completely off-topic, but also 'attending Cabinet' will be the minister for AI, who has a degree in PPE and will be completely clueless. This country would be a lot better off if more civil servants and politicians had maths or science degrees.

Bummer

Would be nice if there was no “gender criticals” aka transphobes in government. Their rot has taken hold of their country with their lawfare funded by far right sources and rich bigots.

Ellie Reeves becomes Attorney General.

Edit. Need to check this, seems weird to go from Solicitor General to Attorney General.

Don't know her views, but she was harassed by Tracey Smith.

Expect the TRAs are as overjoyed as we are 😂

Starmer was the main driving force behind the Assisted Dying Bill, and I suspect Burnham would be happy if it quietly went away.

Nandy stays at DCMS. This is actually a test for Burnham - will Nandy row back from some of the crackpot authoritarianism she's been floating?

I don't think he'll have the stomach for the fight that would come from stopping the puberty blockers trial or the conversion therapy ban though. He'll just try and hide and hope it all goes away, which means he won't be on top of the whackamole that is trying to stop made gender ideology from popping up in different bits of legislation and policy.

On a similar note (being too scared to address contentious issues head on) what do people think he might do about the Assisted Dying Bill? Enthusiastic enabler or grudging hands-off 'let the chips fall where they may'?

I think Burnham is likely to steer clear of all things trans as much as he can. I expect he’ll direct his cabinet to do the same. He wants to get traction on matters that will result in winning back the traditional labour voter who isn’t interested in gender or women’s rights……or anything unrelated to their day to day quality of life.

Burnham has made the W&E brief a full cabinet position so she retains the salary and a seat in the cabinet. She wouldn’t turn that down.

But KCSIE is out now so she has limited room on that front. I would hope given AB’s focus on education and NEETs that she’ll be directed on that front?

Because the Left has always had a problem with women, and no Labpur government has ever tried to sort it out.

The one I'm concerned about is Lord Chancellor. I know the LC doesn't strictly have to be a lawyer, but it very much helps, and I'm trying to think of parliamentary lawyers who aren't Starmer cronies, and I keep coming back to Thornberry.

What? You'd think even out of pique she would have told him to stick that.

Bridget Philipson keeps Minister for Women and Equalities.
It's depressing.

Lucy Powell for Education is not good news at all. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/30/trans-rules-wrong-labour-deputy-contender/

Doesn't she have a trans activist son? And didn't she once refuse to answer the question, what is a woman with "I don't want to go down that rabbit hole"? I get the feeling that she will go with whatever the prevailing view is that's to her advantage tbh. I hope I'm wrong.

Ahhh beaten to it by OhBuggerandArse (excellent name btw 🙂)