“History is women following behind with the bucket.” So despairs Mrs Lintott, the only female character in Alan Bennett’s wry – and aptly named – 2004 drama The History Boys. She doesn’t get much of a chance to expound upon her theme; in this 1980s classroom there are too many clever boys and clever men with clever things to discuss. Which, of course, rather proves her point: men make speeches and decisions, while women are overlooked until a moment of crisis, at which point they are summoned for the clean-up operation.
One might hope that politics in 2026 has moved on a bit. But this week’s Westminster shenanigans suggest we are still very much in bucket territory.
To recap: a male prime minister is under fire for appointing a male ambassador (despite the highly accomplished but female incumbent wanting to stay on) and ennobling a male former adviser, both of whom were known to have ties to male sex offenders convicted of crimes relating to paedophilia. His male chief of staff and director of communications have both quit, while the recently appointed male head of the civil service has also been removed. In such emergency circumstances, a gaggle of women who were considered but passed over for the top jobs now are being drafted in. Two of them are currently serving as joint acting chiefs of staff. (Presumably they will remain in post to steady the ship until a suitable man can be found.)
The changing of the gender guard is not just confined to adviser roles behind the scenes. On Wednesday afternoon, the Prime Minister was minded (or dragged) to address female MPs in his party, who are unsurprisingly furious at how things have played out. Harriet Harman, the Labour peer who was permitted to serve temporarily as interim party leader after the 2010 election defeat, urged him to bring back the role of first secretary of state and appoint a woman to fill it. This suggestion has not been immediately rejected, which says something. (Harman herself was not allowed to be de facto deputy prime minister when she was deputy leader of the Labour party – that role went to the aforementioned disgraced ambassador, Peter Mandelson.) How this would work with the existing Deputy Prime Minister – a man – is unclear. But the belated drive to recognise female talent is not.
Indeed, it goes all the way to the top. The bookies’ favourite to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister is Angela Rayner. Other names – Lucy Powell, Shabana Mahmood, Yvette Cooper – are suddenly being discussed with renewed intensity. As Starmer was addressing the Labour women, news emerged that Bridget Phillipson’s odds had more than halved, rocketing her into the mix. The male frontrunner, Wes Streeting, is well aware of the vibe shift and has been out and about bigging up his close friendship with Jess Phillips, as a way to detoxify his relationship with Mandelson by association to one of Labour’s most ardent women’s rights campaigners. It is not subtle.
The Labour party has never quite managed to elect a female leader. Might this be the moment that changes? The argument goes like this. The scandal engulfing it is inherently male in nature: male sex crimes (committed by Jeffrey Epstein and Sean Morton) discounted or explained away by their male friends (Peter Mandelson and Matthew Doyle), who in turn were forgiven for this lack of judgement by yet more men (Morgan McSweeney and, crucically, Keir Starmer). Some argue it is unfair for Starmer – who is two steps removed from the actual offences – to be so tarnished by other men’s actions. But how expansive must someone’s blind spot be to take at face value the excuses offered for why the men he wanted to appoint remained friends with paedophiles? Or, to ask it another way, would a woman be so quick to accept the assurances that Mandelson and Doyle thought their friends were innocent, thus absolving them of any responsibility for continuing the friendships?
There is nothing wrong with this sort of reckoning, other than it being long overdue. If the infamous boys’ club at the top of government is finally getting a shake-up, good. But there’s something unsettling about the pervasive narrative that, now the men have screwed things up, it’s up to the women to come in and clean house.
This is a well-recognised phenomenon outside of politics. In business it’s known as the “glass cliff”, coined by British psychologists in 2005 who found that FTSE 100 companies were more likely to appoint female board members when company stock was in decline. Whether this is because women are seen as “a safe pair of hands” or simply because male candidates are reluctant to take on a role where they are more likely to fail, the opportunity to smash through the glass ceiling often comes in the midst of crisis when the chances of success are slim. Inevitably, lack of success is then used as an argument against appointing more women in the future when the picture looks more rosy.
Personally, I prefer the bucket metaphor. A woman can enter the rooms of power only when those rooms have been trashed, for the thoroughly unglamorous task of clearing up.
There are exceptions, of course. Liz Truss was hardly appointed for her spring-cleaning skills – nor can her swift combustion be blamed on the mess left by her predecessor, substantial though it was. Sometimes men are cast in the caretaker role too, as Starmer once was. This is not to argue that are women inherently better – more decent, more competent, more ethical – than men (though they may be less likely to offer sex criminals the benefit of the doubt). The furious row over the mooted female replacement for the cabinet secretary role, who is rumoured to have more than few skeletons in her own closet, shows the dangers of assuming one sex is inherently risk-free.
And none of is this an attempt to undermine or underestimate the women being brought in now to try to dig the government out of its hole. They may do a fantastic job – or they may prove as disastrously incompetent as the boys’ club they replace. The same goes for a proposed female first secretary of state, or the first female Labour prime minister, if we ever get one.
It would just be nice if flawed women were given the same opportunities to try and fail as flawed men – if they were routinely considered for top jobs on their own merits, not just their ability to wield a mop.
[Further reading: Why you hate Keir Starmer]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment