Does Labour have a ‘problem’ with powerful women?

The so-called ‘party of equality’ is falling at the first hurdle when it comes to women in power – and it doesn’t look to be getting any better.

Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall led the charge against the Conservatives and David Cameron in the 2015 Labour Leadership election, both declaring that Cameron himself had a ‘woman problem’. A year later, Theresa May is Prime Minister and both of the aforementioned Labour MPs are on the back benches of the opposition in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

It’s quite clear David Cameron has a ‘woman problem’; let’s give him an even bigger one! — Yvette Cooper MP

What’s happened since that point? Despite efforts to see diversity at the top, Corbyn has overseen a Labour Shadow Cabinet where all four of the great offices of state – Leader of the Opposition, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary are mainly male. It took until the mass resignations in June to finally appoint a woman to that ‘quad’ – Emily Thornberry as Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Now, outside of the Shadow Cabinet, Labour faces even move ‘women issues’. The Labour London Mayor, Welsh First Minister and all candidates for the Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Midlands ‘Metro Mayors’ are men. Only one woman, Luciana Burger, ran (in Liverpool), and came last. In every leadership contest Labour have ever had, only Yvette Cooper hasn’t finished last – though she lost to another woman, and still a woman leadership candidate has never won over a male one.

All this shows one thing: that Labour is frankly scared of having strong women in power. While the Conservatives have delivered Britain’s two only women Prime Ministers, the Labour Party were incapable of making the best leadership candidate Yvette Cooper leader, relegating her to third place. Indeed, the only part of Labour that seemingly isn’t terrified of women at the top is Scottish Labour, where Kezia Dugdale is leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

Labour’s issue with powerful women stems much deeper than the ‘lack of good women’ argument. There are 99 women Labour MPs, each with extraordinary talents with the ability to one day be leader, or at least much better than Jeremy Corbyn. It isn’t the lack of talent that’s at fault in Labour, it’s the fear of women’s talent and the linking of that talent to males in the party.

“There are some on the benches opposite that ask the question: ‘What has the Conservative Party ever done for women?’ — Just keep making us Prime Minister!”
 — Theresa May at her first PMQs

Yvette Cooper’s leadership campaign was overshadowed constantly by the fact that she was Ed Balls’ wife- and her relation to Gordon Brown in ideological terms featured more than her own ideas for leadership. The so-called ‘part of equality’ and ‘party of feminism’ tore itself at the seems, linking women to their male superiors rather than engage in structural debate and acknowledge female leadership contenders as their own person with individual ideas and ideology.

The left’s reaction to PM Theresa May

Labour’s reaction to Theresa May’s appointment as the UK’s new Prime Minister also highlighted the left’s general issue with women in power, but from a slightly different angle.

There is no doubt that Theresa May as a Conservative politician holds values and believes in policies which do not, to the left’s perspective, ‘aid women’. However, to dismiss her appointment as anything other than a huge victory for women’s representation and role in public life is in itself sexist. Regardless of your party’s record on advancing “feminist issues”, disregarding a woman’s achievement as being appointed to the political leader of the United Kingdom simply because you politically disagree is wrong and narrow minded.

Yet, that’s what many on the left, particularly in the Labour Party, did. Instead of attacking just policy, some of which I myself disagree with, the Labour left proceeded to take the higher ground on morality, exclaiming that May as PM would “do nothing for women and girls”. They say the same about Hillary Clinton in the United States, and undermines a woman’s political achievement in a male dominated system. If nothing else, these women show that women can and do hold power, and act as role models for women and girls.

Labour’s response and their ‘problem’

The response of the Labour Party to criticise May in this way further fuelled speculation of Labour’s ‘problem’ with women in power. It shows a pseudo-fear of women who don’t agree with the left wing principles that figures such as Jeremy Corbyn exude in his leadership of the Labour Party, and assumes that all women must be left wing in order to count. Those that disagree with Jeremy a Corbyn from outside the party, and particularly from the right don’t count. Those from within the Labour Party itself, meanwhile, experience abuse, like the threats targeted at Yvette Cooper’s and Jess Philip’s children.

It’s a concept that now exists in Corbynite Labour – that anyone who moves to oppose the leadership of Corbyn is automatically a right winger, and therefore moving to undermine Labour. Regardless of whether this is or is not the case, when this concept of dissent is applied to Labour women, it brings them into the realm of the likes of right wing women that do not count in the views of Labour leftists and Corbyn cultists.

In Labour in 2016, powerful women are few and far between. The party is excessively male dominated, and women are increasingly side-lined in selection processes or simply don’t stand. The Parliamentary Labour Party is chock full of woman talent, yet the party itself will not accept any of them in high positions at the cost of their “socialist” leadership.

It’s clear Labour have an issue with women who seek power. The party’s inability to put women in powerful positions simply discredits their case to be the party of equality, and shows that the membership of the party is more concerned with so-called ‘ideological purity’ than being a movement for feminism and women’s equality in public life. It’s an even greater shame when so many of the Labour women that are sidelined because of this obsession would make great leaders and holders of high office if the Labour Party would embrace an ideological position of a broad church of debate.