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

Perhaps she's been approached and doesn't want it?

This. Out of 400 MOs they couldn't think of one person to be leader. There isn't enough talent in the ranks for them to be choosy. Not to mention Labour clearly don't think women are capable of doing anything except hold bags for the leader and gaze adoringly at him so they'll slap anyone in because all women are interchangeable fluffy headed bimbos anyway.

The Labour movement is incredibly patronising both to women and people of Colour. The White Middle class core of the party can only see people in stereotypes. They have a massive blind spot about their own prejudices.

In a sane world where we aren’t being emotionally blackmailed and gaslit by minorities, this is axiomatic.

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

This.The time and place to start getting true representation is at school, with girls, or with programmes aimed at excellent women currently in the workplace.
One of the biggest barriers for women nowadays is the utter filth directed at women in the public eye though. It certainly puts me off standing for any sort of public office.
Aside from that, I don’t know why but Labour women have been really unimpressive in the past 25 years or so. Like, proper wet blankets. Not sure why.
Mainly I would like to see people who have had real jobs/ run businesses be more represented in parliament. I still find it astonishing you can become Chancellor without even a degree in economics!

of course you can believe what you like but looking at the actual evidence:

Conservatives: three female leaders - Thatcher, May and Badinoch (four if you really have to include Liz Truss). Two leaders of colour Sunak and Badinoch.

Labour - no female leaders and no leaders of colour.

The evidence speaks for itself.

Agree. However, she seems to be really proud of delivering budgets for growth.

She can "talk the talk" but she can't "walk the walk". Talk is cheap, especially with a good speech writer behind her. But actions speak louder than words!

Agree

Depends on who those women are doesn’t it? There are lots of women who are traitors to their sex in the Labour government

There also two types of women...

No. I am a feminist but am
against any such directives. I would be very happy if the best people for the position are women, absolutely, but I don’t want to see a situation whereby women are placed into positions because they are women.

I think Rachel Reeve is a weak and uninspiring chancellor, I wouldn’t like her to keep out a more effective candidate just because she is a women and the stronger candidate is a man.

Your response is interesting. We are always told that all MPs really want to be PM ... so do we assume that this is not the case with women? Three of the four top jobs are with women. Rachel seems not to be widely respected but the other two - Shabana and Yvette are, they are eminently qualified in many ways for the top job. More so than Mr Burnham.

I don't disagree that RR is a flawed Chancellor but honestly which Labour MP do you think would do a better job than her?

Its like let's replace Starmer with Burnham - do you really think it will make any difference and he'll somehow turn the economy around?

I don't believe that's the case. When I worked at Westminster most MPs I met were happy representing their constituents and promoting causes they believe in. Many don't want any higher office and the profile/stress that goes with it. Not to say they would turn down a Ministerial post, but that would likely be more about party loyalty than fulfilling an ambition.

From my very limited exposure to MPs of all parties at that time (before Reform and the growth in SNP support), I'd say the most talented and empathetic MPs fell into that category. Most are pretty decent human beings (and some so full of their own self importance I expected them to explode at any minute!)

Labour is not a party for women. That is why they have never had a female priminster.

Thanks that is more reassuring than what we hear in the press! It is just my thinking, rather than the 50%, is you have 3 of the 4 top jobs filled by women but somehow you need to parachute a man in for the top one?

I am afraid I was a bit influenced, yesterday, by hearing that the investigative journalism that exposed Josh Simons (he of Makerfield MP fame) won the Private Eye Paul Foot award. Now I understand why he was so ready to clear off for Burnham - his goose was well and truly cooked as far as Westminster is concerned.

You just need to look at how incredibly misogynistic the unions are to see why.

Agreed.

I think more women woukd be preferable though, we do out perform men in almost everything.

I'd back a drive to have more female MPs, 50/50 seems arbitrary though.

Look at all the governments/countries that are flying, Iceland, Scandinavian countries, they are far more female led.

Men are usually in uk politics for the wrong reasons; power, glory, ego, entitlement etc.

Yes it’s born from the unions, the misogyny carries on.

Sharon Graham, Andrea Egan, etc....?

Both misogynists

I don't know, perhaps Reeve's replacement may actually do some research, checking, etc before implementing damaging policy changes that were blindingly obviously damaging to anyone with half a brain cell rather than idiotic politics of spite and envy.

We've had a few half decent chancellors in the past with little experience, who've actually bothered to understand the full consequences of changes they were considering to make, such as Alisdair Darling and Phil Hammond, the latter being laughed at and called "spreadsheet Phil" because he actually wanted to understand the changes being suggested by his senior civil servants (they didn't like him checking things!!)