Furious female Labour MPs have called on Sir Keir Starmer to appoint a woman to a powerful new role to end the “boys’ club” culture in No 10 which has been exposed by the Mandelson and Doyle scandals that have rocked his premiership.
Harriet Harman, one of the most senior figures in the party, urged the prime minister to fill the vacant post of first secretary of state – once held by Peter Mandelson – with a female candidate as he addressed the recent chaos during a meeting of female Labour MPs and peers in Parliament.
She said the role must be held by a woman and used to “transform the political culture in government around women and girls”.
Sir Keir faced a packed meeting of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party after a bruising Prime Minister’s Questions, where he was accused by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch of running a “boys’ club” in Downing Street and “stuffing government with hypocrites and paedophile apologists” following the recent scandals involving Mandelson and his former communications chief Matthew Doyle.
Fresh concerns were raised over the prime minister’s judgment following the decision give a peerage to Lord Doyle last month, who on Tuesday had the Labour whip withdrawn over his links to a convicted sex offender.
Sir Keir defended his decision to act only on Tuesday, weeks after headlines about their links first emerged, telling MPs during Prime Minister’s Questions that Lord Matthew Doyle “did not give a full account of his actions” when the PM nominated him for a peerage before Christmas.
But critics pointed out that Lord Doyle’s links to Sean Morton, whom he campaigned for in 2017 after he had been charged over indecent images of children, were publicly known before he was officially became a peer in January.
Speaking to Labour MPs after PMQs, Sir Keir apologised again over the appointment of Lord Mandelson admitted that the government had to do more to eradicate structural misogyny and achieve cultural change.
As Starmer spoke to female Labour MPs in parliament, one told the Independent female MPs were “distressed” about recent events, “as we really care about our Party and believe it is a vehicle for ending misogyny and abuse.”
Ahead of the meeting, Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, told The Independent: “The Doyle revelations only confirm he’s not fit to govern.
“He’s only been in the Lords a matter of weeks, yet it was already known that he was a friend of – and campaigned for – a convicted paedophile. Another example of very poor judgment.”
Another female Labour MP told The Independent she was “very angry” and hit out at the elevation of Lord Doyle, saying it showed a “huge level of disrespect to victims everywhere”.
She added of the Labour leadership: “They knew about Mandelson and Epstein when they hired him and they knew about Doyle and Morton when they put him in the Lords – so you have to question their judgement.”
Sir Keir is understood to have faced multiple questions over Lord Doyle at a wider meeting of the full parliamentary Labour party on Monday night, but the peer was only stripped of the whip 24 hours later.
The development raised fresh questions over Sir Keir’s judgement as it appeared to contain echoes of the Peter Mandelson scandal, which has already cost the Labour leader his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and brought his premiership to the brink of collapse.
Opposition leaders leapt on the prime minister’s woes in the Commons on Wednesday. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “To appoint one paedophile supporter cannot be excused as ‘misfortune’. To appoint two shows a catastrophic lack of judgment.”
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn added Sir Keir “appears to be the most gullible former director of public prosecutions in history”.
Earlier in the session, Mrs Badenoch said: “The prime minister sometimes likes to claim, as he just did, that he cares about violence against women. The truth is, he only cares about the victims when he’s trying to save his own skin.”
Sir Keir said he would take “no lectures from the Tories” on standards in public life, pointing to partygate and former shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick’s comments “about not seeing enough white faces in Birmingham”.
Mrs Badenoch hit back saying: “How dare he criticise us. We weren’t the ones stuffing government with hypocrites and paedophile apologists.
“He can’t build a team, he has no plan, he can’t even run his own office, let alone the country. He is now dealing with a new scandal of appointing someone who campaigned for a man convicted of having indecent pictures of girls as young as 10. Isn’t the Prime Minister ashamed that that would be his legacy?”
Sir Keir replied: “My legacy is changing my party and winning a general election.”
Downing Street rejected suggestions that it had been run as a “boys’ club”, and the Prime Minister’s spokesman said he did not accept he had failed to fulfil his promise to end sleaze.
Sir Keir has insisted his top team is “strong and united” after Cabinet ministers rallied around him with public messages of support following Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s call for him to quit.
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