Furious female Labour MPs urge Starmer to make a woman his de facto deputy

Female Labour MPs have demanded that Keir Starmer appoint a senior woman as his de facto deputy to oversee a “complete culture change” in Downing Street after a series of scandals that they say have exposed a No 10 “boy’s club”.

Harriet Harman, one of the party’s most senior figures, urged Starmer to revive the role of first secretary of state on Wednesday, a post occupied by Peter Mandelson under Gordon Brown.

But she insisted the role must be held by a woman to “transform the political culture in government around women and girls”.

The intervention comes after a tumultuous fortnight that has left the prime minister fighting for his political future. This week has seen a clear out of some of Starmer’s closest advisors, including his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, as the prime minister sought to regain his grip on his party.

On Wednesday, Starmer was again forced on the defensive, saying that his former communications chief Matthew Doyle “did not give a full account of his actions” before being nominated for a peerage, after it emerged Doyle had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children.

Soon after a uncharacteristically pugnacious performance at prime minister’s questions, where the leaders of all the main political party lined up to question his judgment over Doyle’s peerage, Starmer faced a packed meeting of female members of the Labour party (PLP) meeting. He apologised again to them for appointing Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US, promising action to “eradicate structural misogyny”.

Harman told Starmer that decisive action was needed to draw a line under the scandals and told him to to appoint a woman as first secretary of state who would be his de facto deputy and the most senior cabinet member after the prime minister. She said it would be “really powerful” if the role was given to a woman and said fighting misogyny should be the sixth mission of the Starmer government. Harman was deputy Labour leader under Gordon Brown, but he refused to make her deputy prime minister, later promoting Mandelson to first secretary of state. Mandelson was the last Labour figure to hold the role. Harman said the role would be in addition to the post of deputy prime minister held by David Lammy.

“We need a complete culture change and I think everybody recognises that,” Harman told the Guardian. “But it’s easier to say let’s change culture than to make it happen.” The first secretary role would “turbocharge” the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls over the next decade, she said. “It would deal with culture change, but it would also hold every government department accountable for what they are doing on women and empower the work on women that’s happening in each of those departments.”

The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said on Wednesday she hoped to see an end to sexist briefings from within the government against female cabinet ministers. “Some of the briefings have absolutely been dripping with misogyny,” she told Times Radio.

“You hear these things about ‘we’re lazy, we spend too much time with our kids, we don’t spend enough time with our kids’. You really can’t win. But in the end it’s designed to try to keep us down and to try and stop us from being heard.” Asked if anything had changed, Nandy said: “I’m saying it’s still going on, I’m absolutely acknowledging that.”

The fallout of the Mandelson scandal, worsened by the revelations about Doyle, has sparked real anger in the Labour ranks and particularly among female MPs, with one describing it as “the worst week of her life”.

Another Labour MP said Starmer’s meeting with women from the PLP was “the least he could fucking do”, and that his future depended on moving the dial on violence against women and girls and “ending the kowtowing to the vested interests of powerful rich men”. They added: “I’m just not sure the government is up for it.”

In a blog before the meeting, the local government minister, Alison McGovern, wrote: “It’s our culture that doesn’t properly hear women which meant Peter Mandelson’s power lasted for so long.”

Amid the fury among female members of parliament, a growing Amazonian guard has formed around Starmer since McSweeney’s resignation. McSweeney, who said he had advised Starmer to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador, has been replaced by acting joint chiefs of staff Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson.

The role of director of communications vacated by Tim Allan on Monday has been filled for now by Sophie Nazemi, one of the few veterans of the Corbyn era who has gained Starmer’s trust. Another name linked with the role is Starmer’s former director of communications Stephanie Driver, who resigned when Allan was promoted above her last autumn. The reputation of No 10’s political director, Amy Richards, has also strengthened, and she is widely thought to be playing a pivotal role in improving Starmer’s relationship with his party.

But MPs urged Starmer to go further at the PLP meeting – described by one attendee as “supportive and constructive” – on Wednesday. The Bolsover MP, Natalie Fleet, who became pregnant after being groomed and raped as a teenager, asked the prime minister to launch a national inquiry into the crimes of the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, telling him that victims had written to No 10 but had not received a reply.

She asked Stamer to meet her and the victims. “These are our victims, this is our Epstein,” she said, adding that English police officers had taken bribes and doctors had checked that victims were virgins.

“I know, as a survivor, that nobody cares,” she said. “Literally, nobody cares. You have to seize the moment right now, people up and down the country saying they care. OK, great, let’s do something about it.”

Fleet said Starmer still had her full support but had to demonstrate that he had listened to women’s concerns, including those in his own party. “I genuinely believe that Starmer is the best we’ve got when it comes to tackling violence against women and girls,” she said.

“If I could pick a prime minister out of the country, I would pick somebody with a record like his. The fact that he’s being derailed to this scale by this drama just feels so ironic, because he genuinely cares. That’s why we need him to do more. We need him to deliver. We need deeds, not words.”