Can Burnham’s Labour resolve its gender problem?

Days into Andy Burnham's premiership, key figures in the Labour Party (including Deputy Leader Lucy Powell) came out to promise that he would end the ‘boys club’ within Number 10 and within the Labour Party. This statement feels a long way off from a party that confidently declared itself ‘the Real Women’s Party’ in their 1918 election manifesto. Powell’s promise (and hope) speaks to a time-old issue within Labour: its problem with women. An examination of Labour’s gender problem is essential to understanding the hope that Burnham might address it, and how optimistic we should be that he might resolve it.

The problem

From Labour’s origins through to today, there are no shortage of stories about women being ignored and dismissed by men in both the Parliamentary Labour Party and Cabinet, undermined in constituency and branch meetings, being jeered and mocked by their party colleagues, and being made to feel uncomfortable throughout all structures of the party. Sarah Childs refers to descriptions of female MPs in the party by Labour men as an ‘uncritical mass’ and ‘stepford wives’, and some Labour women have described a ‘systemic resistance’ to their presence. First-hand testimony from sources including the 2001 Harman-Shephard collection of interviews, autobiographies of influential women such as former deputy Harriet Harman, interviews with former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, and so many more, highlight consistent, unacceptable behaviours, and how normalised they quickly became in the party.

Labour was formed to win the franchise of and represent working-class men, that was its purpose and that was its ethos. The experience of women in Labour paints an overwhelming and undeniable image of a political party which has struggled to move on from an early absence of women. These accounts run through to Martin Forde’s 2020 Report, which (amongst other issues highlighted) exposed and condemned the factional ‘terrible misogyny’ running throughout the party. As the party has evolved these behaviours may have become more subtle, with a move towards microaggressions (as described by Forde). Whilst Labour made remarkable progress on women’s electoral representation (in Westminster and locally) through all-women shortlists and other gender quotas, its culture acts as a brake on this.

Accusations of a ‘boys club’ have been made about all recent Labour Prime Ministers, with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Keir Starmer all (at one point) being criticised on these grounds. Blair was accused by some MPs and activists of having an exclusive circle which excluded women from power and decision-making, and promoted a ‘laddish’ culture in government. Brown faced similar critiques, and his difficulty working with women was even acknowledged by his Deputy Leader Harman (through her interview with Reeves for “Women of Westminster”). Under Starmer, a self-described ‘hard bastard’, despite his moves to promote women, many in his top team were targets of frequent press briefings against them, and rumours of their demotions were constant. Bridget Phillipson described the constant briefings about her as sexist, and it became clear that female ministers were being scapegoated by Number 10. A letter presented to Burnham by the Women’s PLP raised concerns around ‘structural misogyny’ since the 2024 election; bullying behaviour being rewarded, sexual harassment being ignored, along with issues about the culture of Number 10, and the closed way in which Starmer’s politics were done. Every time Labour have managed to get into power in the last few decades, women in the party have found themselves locked out of the room, even if they’re in frontline positions. We will see if Burnham can indeed break with this pattern, as his team has promised he will.

The cause?

Labour’s gender problem has been a constant contradiction for the party’s progressive values. The problem is rooted in the party’s identity: its founding, constitution, and purpose. The Labour Party was formed with an early focus on representing white, working-class men, and acting in their interests. Women were not part of the equation, and this had a rippling effect on their role and place within the Party. Labour’s gender problem is a result of numerous factors, including (but not limited to) its male-based foundations, the male-led trade union roots, and the misogyny built into Britain’s wider political structures that Labour is a part of.

Another cause of these issues is, I argue, the party’s factionalism and constant infighting. The internal factionalism acts as a defining feature of Labour, and the never-ending battle for control feeds into all of the Party’s issues, including its perpetual gender problem. As highlighted by Forde in his Report, factions within Labour are often keen to use and weaponise issues rather than act to meaningfully resolve them. Misogyny and issues around gender become part of a mud slinging contest, with the Right and Left both aiming to absolve themselves and attack the other. This makes tackling the issues within the party’s culture become a game of passing the buck, and loyalty to a faction often allows issues of a male-led culture to go unnoticed and unchallenged. As Forde highlights, many on both the left and right of the party were ‘so firmly convinced of being the wronged party’ in any cultural problems that any evidence of failings within their own faction was dismissed. Blame for misogyny and unacceptable behaviours is instead used as a weapon to throw at each side.

Forde claims that there is a tendency on ‘all sides of the party’ to dismiss any complaint to a person from the same faction ‘as a bad faith, politically-motivated attack’. His report later goes on to describe an incident in which a woman in the Labour Party put in a complaint over sexist behaviour from her line manager, however, since they were a political appointment’ her complaint was ‘disregarded and twisted’ in order to frame it as ‘politically motivated’. Under Jeremy Corbyn, women in the party publicly expressed concerns about his willingness to ignore misogyny if it came from his own side. This criticism was predominantly made by women on the centre and right of the party.

Under Starmer’s leadership, it was key Corbyn ally John McDonnell who was one of the first Labour MPs to publicly criticise him on these grounds, along with defector MP Rosie Duffield, who accused him of running a boys club. Starmer and his allies (including former general secretary of the party, Hollie Ridley) called for such accusations to stop, accusing them of undermining the recognition of women in the party. Whilst Starmer faced critiques from across Labour later on in his leadership, this was largely after he had begun to lose de facto control of both the party and his faction, and most came after he was already on his way out (and Burnham on his way in).

Factionalism allows the masculine culture to go unchallenged by the leadership, and instead is weaponised to discredit the opposing factions and previous leadership. This is certainly not helped by the fact that no matter which way the pendulum swings, the faction in control is always focused around a man. The factions in Labour are predominantly led by and surround men. Every ‘ism’ in the party is named after a man (in stark contrast to the Conservative Party, in which every leader - unfortunately - attempts to emulate Thatcherism), ranging from the Left’s Corbynism and the Right’s Blairism. The goal of each faction is always to get their man and their ‘ism’ into power, whilst tackling issues of misogyny and covert inequality becomes secondary.

Andy Burnham

Can Burnham tackle this problem? He has already vowed to end the briefing culture against female ministers that was ripe under Starmer, and his Cabinet is the first in history to be completely gender balanced. An effort is clearly being made to appear to break from Starmer’s cultural problems. However, his early appointment to the very top jobs so far seems to paint a picture of Burnham's boys, with his Chief of Staff, Chancellor, and Foreign Secretary all being men that he has previously worked with. With some in his current team and Cabinet (James Purnell, John Healey, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander) it feels like a reunion party for men in New Labour’s Cabinet. His campaign and early days so far certainly feel distinctly ‘blokeish’ (a word used by Number 10’s own social media team), and his branding seems heavily weighted on pints, pubs, and football. You wouldn’t have to scroll far on his social media to see images of all three. One of his first promises post-premiership was to let pubs know that the ‘cavalry is coming’, and that was his first destination following his by-election victory. Greggs have already re-named his order in his honour. He is (or hopes to be) ‘one of the boys’ according to a recent visit.

Burnham’s blokeyness seems to be repeating the same culture patterns as all that came before. In his book chapter on "Labour and Gender" (in Labour's First Century: A Centenary History of the Labour Party) Martin Francis makes the argument that masculinity (and femininity) exist in many different forms within politics. We can see this argument here with Burnham, whose ‘blokeish’ behaviour differs from Starmer’s more rigid men-in-suits brand, but which is all part of the same story when it comes to Labour’s innate masculinity. In promoting it, Burnham legitimises it across the party, and the masculinity he participates in trickles down. It comes across in the presentation of other Labour politicians, with photos of them at the pub, pulling pints, or at the football. The effect is negative cumulatively, particularly for women looking on

If factionalism is a key proponent of Labour’s gender issues, then Burnham’s promise to end the infighting and factions is certainly hopeful. However, Burnham’s premiership was backed and engineered in large part by Labour’s newest political grouping, Mainstream. It was instrumental in his leadership challenge, and Burnham himself was a main founding member. Mainstream’s founding statement has twice the number of male signatures compared to women (42 to 21); if this is Burnham’s political project, it begs the question where are the women? It is vital that Burnham goes further than rhetoric, and that Labour women are given credit for more than just running his campaign. Labour women must be allowed in the room, and being in Cabinet, or positions of power, is not necessarily the same.

The consequences

Burnham’s ascension to becoming leader is, in many ways, a consequence of Labour’s complex relationship to gender. One of the most visible symbols of Labour’s issues on this subject is the party’s lack of an elected female leader; perhaps an obvious point but still a very important one. Labour remains the only contemporary progressive party in Britain to never have elected a woman as its leader. In fact, once it comes down to the final ballot, a woman has never done better than a man. Every-time a man has come last, there has been no woman on the final ballot paper. Otherwise it’ll be her: Margaret Beckett came last in 1994, Diane Abbott in 2010, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper came in the bottom two in 2015, and Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey again in 2020. If a woman comes second (Long-Bailey), only one man has made it onto the final ballot. This figure is even more stark in view of the fact that the Conservative Party have faced no issues selecting four women as leaders (three of whom became Prime Minister), despite a much smaller pool to choose from given their general refusal to use quotas to improve the gaps in Parliamentary representation. Kemi Badenoch is the first woman of colour selected to lead a major British political party, whilst Labour remains committed to exclusively electing white men.

Prior to 2020 there were calls by some, including Harman, for no men to stand for Labour leadership, in order to allow a woman a chance of winning. There is a sense of deja vu to watch Harman having to repeat this same line last month following the victory of both Starmer and Burnham since then. No matter how many women are in Burnham’s Cabinet, it cannot cover the fact that there is a glaring glass ceiling in place when it comes to Labour’s leadership, and that Labour has chosen yet another man. This is despite one senior Labour figure bizarrely claiming that Burnham was actually Labour’s ‘first female Prime Minister’ (a claim Burnham has, in fairness, distanced himself from).

The consequences of Labour’s gender problem have spilled out into the ballot box in the past, as highlighted by Laura Beers. From 1945 until 1997, there was no General Election in which more women voted for the Labour Party over the Conservative Party. In 1992 this was one of the reasons given behind Labour’s loss. Stephen Brooke highlighted in ‘Sexual Politics’ that this was in large part due to Labour being perceived as ‘macho’ and ‘male-dominated’. Polling showed that women tended to prefer Labour’s policies, however they just did not trust that they’d deliver. Since the New Labour governments, Labour has gained more female voters and managed to tackle this gendered voting gap, with the reverse happening and women tending to favour Labour, However, in the 2024 election analysis shows that there was a narrowing of this gap, with Labour losing female voters, particularly young women, to the Green Party (and other progressive parties such as the Liberal Democrats).

I understand (and appreciate) that Burnham is battling against polling that has Labour losing voters (predominantly white working-class men) to the Reform Party, and that this is the electoral reality he faces. This, in part, may be a driving force in his masculinity and ‘blokey’ style. Labour will be keen to win back these men, and the strategy in place could rest on embracing Labour's male culture, rather than fighting it. However, I would question any political strategy that believes masculinity is a necessity. Burnham must be careful not to take women’s votes for granted in his pursuit of the largely-male Reform defectors, or he risks a reversal of the progress made post 1992 to tackle the gendered voting divide which benefited Labour’s opponents (namely the Conservative Party).

The resolution?

Can Burnham resolve Labour’s gender problem? The short answer is probably not. It is unlikely that a man who benefited from this very problem (facing fewer opponents who might be able to beat him for leadership, given that Labour seems unable to select a woman) will be able to succeed in rooting it out. In Burnham’s defence, that’s not entirely his fault. This is not a new problem, it is one that has been with Labour since its origins, now just featuring new players. The accusations of a ‘boys club’ and a closed political culture did not begin with Starmer, and nor are they very likely to end with him. Some of the steps Burnham’s taking on this are certainly positive, with his rhetoric on the issue conveying a sense that he does, at least, understand that there is a problem. I do not want to dismiss his moves on increasing Cabinet representation, nor his promises of no-tolerance policy on misogyny within the party. Yet his early days don’t appear to be making any major break with the past, and his blokeyness cannot be understated. It comes across in most of what he does, and certainly has trickled down in the party. It legitimises a politics that promotes just another form of Labour’s masculinity. The number of women in the very top jobs has actually been reduced, replaced by former New Labour Cabinet colleagues of Burnham.

The task of tackling Labour’s gender problem is an unenviable one. Yet it falls to everyone in the party, not only Burnham (although certainly him in particular). It must go beyond a promising rhetoric, and it cannot keep being something different factions weaponise then ignore when faced with the issues on their own side. If Labour cannot resolve this cultural brake, or at least take it seriously enough to not make jokes about Burnham's supposed female leadership, then they cannot fix the tension that exists between its progressiveness and the reality for women within the party. They may have to also face the electoral consequences if they cannot inspire female voters, particularly young women who are already seeking alternatives. Women do not owe Labour their vote, and the party must remember this.

I doubt Burnham’s Labour will resolve its gender problem, but I hope that I’m wrong. I’m not sure what it will take to tackle it, but I hope that we see it soon.

Edith Fisher is a Senior Parliamentary Assistant to Labour and Co-operative MP Rachael Maskell.