To think it's time for a woman to be Prime Minister

[Cinnamon77]

It doesn't look like Starmer is going to be PM for much longer but all the favourites to replace him are men.

Every female PM we've had has been Conservative - no woman has ever led the Labour Party before.

Wouldn't it be an improvement to have a left wing woman running the country, like we've seen elsewhere? There are many good female MPs in Labour like Raynor, Mahmood, Huq, Phillips, Siddiq, Leadbeater, Thornberry, Dodds, Kendall, Haigh, Butler and Reeves (Ellie, not Rachel).

Why aren't any of them contenders and wouldn't we be doing better if one of them was in charge?

As were all the men, no? And they came from a much bigger pool too with all the odds and conditions in their favour.
So few women are able to get to the top due to sexism, institutional oppression and mysoginy the pool isn't great.
Look what the most privileged of the human species and male have done to the country.
Do you ever leave the house? Imagine what women have to deal with to get ahead in politics.
Lieber hate women, the party that supports erosion of women's rights and never had a female leader. That's why they welcome third world criminals who view women as chattel and sell it as a good thing to morons and sheeple.

Omg you mean countries with nearly zero immigration, completely homogenous? Get off social media and learn to read.

It’s a poisoned chalice right now, no one could do a good job given the issues at hand, the budget available and the determination of both the far left and right to bring down and discredit the more centrist politicians, as well as the destructive tendencies of the press.
So no, I wouldn’t wish it on a woman who would then be blamed because she is a woman, and then used as an excuse not to have a female PM for the next generation.

You’re forgetting that Labour hate women. They’re misogyny central. Hence they’ve never had a female leader. Whereas the conservatives have had 4 I think.

It may just be me because I can’t read, but I don’t understand your comment. You mean the countries are homogeneous? The women leaders?

Are Labour MPs reading Mumsnet?!

There are plans to oust Starmer before the end of the year, with groups rallying behind Mahmood (yay!), Rayner (yay!), Streeting (boo!) and Milliband (boo!)

mol.im/a/15249523

Louise Haigh could be Prime Minister within a month!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y0z2q2g2ro

Louise Haigh would be a terrible choice, given her previous history of having pleaded guilty to fraud. Imagine the field day that the opposition parties would have with that!

All hail our new leader, Jeremietta Corbyn.

May was a spineless, amoral POS- very similar to Starmer. You never see them in the same room together.

Can you honestly imagine all the union old men tolerating a woman as a leader?

Don't be daft. That would shake their bigoted foundations to the very roots.

Labour has had a number of hugely capable senior women MPs and they did everything they could to sideline them. Mo Molem and Harriet Harmen were both infinitely more capable than their male leaders of the Labour Party.

Even when Labour tried to even up the numbers, the incoming female MPs were referred to as Blair's babes, characterised by their clothes, patted on the head and patronised. Labour likes their leaders male & pale.

Labour have had two female interim leaders. The sample size of post-Thatcher leaders on both sides isn't really big enough to support the claim of sexism. And I am not a Labour voter.

There are major women-led unions these days. That said I do agree that the optics are pretty terrible and Labour would do well ti choose a woman next time round.

Zarah Sultana obviously.

Though Faiza Shaheen is really the one that got away from (was pushed away by toxic forces in) the Labour party

Weird thing to say about unions given that two of the major unions in this country are currently led by women.

The list of women you supplied is terrifying.
In fact, I don’t think there’s a name in the Labour Party (male or female) that isn’t terrifying. 🥴

As a committed feminist, I don't really care if leaders are male or female. I just want the person who is best fitted to the job.

I don't rate Starmer as a leader. I think he is a decent man who is trying to do his best in an incredibly difficult situation, but he seems to lack vision and he isn't taking his party or the country with him. His judgement also seems to be totally off at times.

Having said that, the country is in crisis after the idiocy that was Brexit and over a decade of Tory mismanagement, compounded by some very poor decisions taken by Rachel Reeves. While I would like to see a better leader to steer the Labour Party through these challenges, I'm far from convinced that what the country needs right now is the distraction of a leadership contest. They need to just focus on the fucking job of sorting out the mess that we are in, and others in the Labour Party need to pull together as a team to support this work instead of exploiting the PM's obvious weaknesses to further their own personal ambition.

The Tory Party haven’t been that much better with regards to women leaders. There have been two since Thatcher, both of whom were given a torrid time by their MPs and forced to resign. (Deservedly in Truss’s case.) Thatcher herself, although revered afterwards, was voted out by her members. In fact, no Tory woman PM has been voted out by the electorate at a general election.

But nevertheless I would also like to see a woman become a Labour PM/ leader of the opposition. I suspect she wouldn’t end up being treated any better by her MPs/party members than the Tory women PMs, though.

😆😆😆

I'm not always a Labour voter but the only one I fancy would be Yvette Cooper - and that's based on negative things like - I haven't been aware of her cocking anything up recently.

I'm not a fan of choosing people for jobs based on their gender. We should be past all that!

I think nearly all politicians now are really lightweight compared to the past - even the bad ones from the past. Don't know why I feel this - could be that I'm older and very cynical and they all look about 13 and 3/4, or it could be that educational standards have fallen and they all seem sadly ignorant and unsophisticated about many things.

I admire Angela Rayner for her achievements in relation to her background, but I never wanted to see her rise to the heights. I'm sorry - call me a snob, but I couldn't see her as PM, meeting international statesmen/women on the world stage. And I'm also old-fashioned in that I think you need to tone down your sex-appeal too, in that context...the flowing locks etc don't give the right message. I know I'll get pounced on for saying that, but it's a considered opinion and I stand by it. It applies to men too - if someone like Aidan Turner became PM and had his designer stubble and flowing waves that wouldn't be right either, so I'm not being sexist.

Of course gender matters.

A lot of the countries that are doing the best in many areas, have female leaders. Women in general have more empathy and sense.

I think that women are more advanced than men in a lot of ways, which is why they constantly try to keep us down

Absolutely not

I admire Angela Rayner for her achievements in relation to her background, but I never wanted to see her rise to the heights. I'm sorry - call me a snob, but I couldn't see her as PM, meeting international statesmen/women on the world stage. And I'm also old-fashioned in that I think you need to tone down your sex-appeal too, in that context...the flowing locks etc don't give the right message. I know I'll get pounced on for saying that, but it's a considered opinion and I stand by it.

Good lord we have a long way to go. Breathtaking misogyny and classism all in one paragraph.

You can consider that the pounce.

I would prefer a tree to this lunatic govt

Maybe the reason the Tories have had more women leaders is because they are more backstabbing and chop and change leaders more regularly. Labour leaders are in the job for longer on average. Blair was leader for nearly 13 years. The Tories have had 10 leaders post-Thatcher, Labour 6 (if you do not count the three stints when women have been interim leaders).