Should Burnham commit to 50% female cabinet ministers?

[JoyousOpalLemur]

The Women's Parliamentary Labour Party, which members of Andy Burnham's team are members of, has said the next government must be 50% male and 50% female.

They are particularly concerned that sacking Rachel Reeves will feed into a Labour culture of misogyny if she is not replaced with a woman, or if other senior posts currently held by men are not given to women.

Do you think this is a good idea?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn07ew5n2jro

I'm not a fan of quotas or positive discrimination. If women are the best candidates for those roles, then yes, but otherwise no. Incompetent people should not be promoted, just because of their sex. RR has been a bloody awful chancellor.

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And putting people in roles that they are not yet able to execute well, or as well as others, props up the faulty beliefs that many people hold about certain groups not being capable.

We are wasting talent and opportunity to be much better by not growing all the talent available nationally. This is what we need to address.

It turns out that treasury got rid of its numeracy competency recruitment test because it reduced diversity….

Agree with people saying he should appoint the best people for the job not commit to an arbitrary percentage.

To be fair RR has been handed an impossible task that would be the same for whoever is in charge- she can't raise taxes, she can't increase debt, she can't cut spending- so she's stuck with a slow managed economic decline of the UK.

Unfortunately we seem to be in a world of "popularity politics" where for voters (drunk on a diet of TV popularity contests) seem to think that if say RR is replaced by say someone more charismatic or well known then that somehow fixes these fundamental economic questions.

RR has been dealt an impossible hand and is the best person for the job of Chancellor in the Labour Party based on what is available.

If they are going to replace her then I don't care about race, sex or anything - I just want the best person for the job.

No. What about 50% of the cabinet are NOT self serving backstabbing corrupt fuckwits, no matter if they are male or female. What a coup that would be.

Fucking hell, surely we are past all this now and know it doesnt matter what sex you are to do a good job. Or of course, chear, lie and fuck everything up.

That poster is not taking about skin colour. Not all talk about diversity is about ethnicity.

Except she has raised taxes but they haven't cut costs.

No. He should commit to the best people for the job. That is all that's needed.

I think most people go into politics to do good and then discover all the perks, the easy money and everything goes to hell.

Hence my pipeline comment.

Identifying and nurturing talent at grassroots would be more sensible than making a headline commitment without a strategy in place.

But equally, who on mumsnet would ever put up her hand and say yes, I’ll be an MP? The vitriol and threats women MPs receive are quantifiably worse than the men and until that is sorted out I don’t see Burnham getting the numbers of candidates he would need.

This.

And as a result of increasing taxes she will have slowed economic growth.

This and this whole s* show is totally undemocratic anyway!

Absolutely not, if the genuinely best people for the job are all male, that’s how it should be, likewise if they were all female. The posts have to go to whoever can do it best regardless of their sex, demanding a 50/50 split seems to be a recipe for disaster and the Labour Party doesn’t need anymore help in that department

Given the shallowness of Labour's "pool of talent" no, he should not. He hasn't got sufficient numbers to do this.

No. Cabinet positions should be awarded to those who are most qualified and best able to do the job.

To be fair to the Tories, all the four female leaders they've had seemingly got there on merit.

I'm not sure you could say the same about the likes of Stella Creasy or Lisa Nandy.

I saw that story!

I'd like to remove the numeracy test that determines how much tax I pay, if that's allowed 😄

It’s better women naturally rise to the top than quotas, Labour fall behind to the Conservatives on this.

Not sure whether they should fix it in absence of that.

Rachel Reeves has literally raised more taxes than any other chancellor in history!

Her first Budget saw her raise taxes by £26 billion alone.

Although Burnham is apparently considering sacking Lammy as Deputy PM and replacing him with a woman.

Correct and as a result this has slowed economic growth. My personal opinion is that RR has finally understood that raising taxes slows economic growth.

However my personal opinion is that whoever Andy Burnham replaces her with, will not.

In short if you think RR was bad just wait for see what Andy Burnham's new Chancellor will do.

That would be good purely from the sense of sacking Lammy because he hasn't been very good in post. His replacement should obviously be whoever is deemed best suited for the job.

That's the problem- who would you replace him with- there simply isn't the experience or talent pool in the Labour Party.

Whilst I accept that Lammy does appear to be out of his depth at times, he is getting better, is far better than what else is in offer and importantly at heart I think he is a decent honest person.

For clarity his ethnicity and sex are completely irrelevant.