LONDON — Labour insiders have long whispered Keir Starmer runs “a boys’ club.” Now some claim it’s hindering his foreign policy too.
Three women who are serving or recently served in foreign-facing roles for the U.K. government, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told POLITICO that the British prime minister had failed to promote women on the international stage.
All three cited the departure of Karen Pierce, the outgoing ambassador to the U.S. known to have strong links to Donald Trump, in favor of veteran Labour operator Peter Mandelson.
Two of these senior officials highlighted Starmer’s selection of men for three prominent vacancies in his administration: the U.K.’s top civil servant, the national security adviser and the chief of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
All three are posts which have never been held by a woman.
One of the officials described the failure to install women in top diplomatic jobs as an “own goal” while another called it “a disappointment.”
Allies of Starmer strongly rejected the characterization, pointing to a phalanx of high-profile female Cabinet ministers and top aides inside No. 10.
‘Laddy culture’
Starmer has faced longstanding claims that his top team is dominated by a few influential male advisers who tend to stick together and are accused of sidelining female voices.
The prime minister himself is known to detest briefings about personalities in politics and last year decried the “boys’ club” label as “an insult” to the women in his team.
The early months of Starmer’s time in office were plagued by reports of a power struggle between election guru Morgan McSweeney and his then-Chief of Staff Sue Gray. Although friends of both advisers denied any such rift, Gray was eventually ousted in favor of McSweeney.
Unhappiness bubbled to the surface again over recent briefings in the press against female members of the Cabinet such as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, attributed to unnamed Downing Street sources.
At the same time, Mandelson, a close ally of Tony Blair, has been nominated as the U.K.’s new ambassador to the U.S., in preference to allowing the incumbent, Pierce, to extend her posting.
Pierce has developed a reputation for building close links with Trump in recent years, while many in London highlight Mandelson’s previous remarks about the incoming president and his known ties to China as evidence he is unlikely to be popular in Washington. The Independent even reported Trump may reject Mandelson’s appointment, a highly unusual move which would cause embarrassment for No. 10.
One Whitehall official in a foreign-facing brief said Mandelson’s preferment was a “joke” given Pierce’s credentials, while another voiced concern that Labour’s conciliatory tone on China was likely to “clash” with their overtures to Trump, which Mandelson would be ill-suited to smooth over.
Three people with inside knowledge of No.10 claimed Mandelson had primarily been McSweeney’s choice for the role, while Starmer is more “lukewarm” about him, in the words of one.
While McSweeney’s role and prior experience is mostly domestic, his pick for ambassador suggests his power reaches beyond that — and not everyone is happy about it.
“There is definitely a laddy culture in Downing Street,” said one person who worked with McSweeney. “I think that’s true of politics everywhere, but this lot are particularly bad for it … They think that politics should operate in a certain way, and they’re all just trying to be Alistair Campbell all the time.”
(Campbell, Blair’s communications director, was famously abrasive and inspired the fearsome Malcolm Tucker in Armando Iannucci’s sitcom The Thick of It.)
‘Fortune favors the brave’
Supporters of Starmer say this is a complete misreading of his operation.
A senior female No. 10 official said the prime minister was “impatiently and ruthlessly focused on winning and delivery” and “people in post, whether that’s Cabinet or staff, are there because they share his focus and have the talent and experience to drive his Plan for Change forward.”
She added that this government might be analyzed along gender lines “because Labour is rightly held to a high standard, but I don’t recognize any of it. If you deliver, you’re in. If you don’t, you’re out. It’s as simple as that.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves rivals even Starmer for influence in Westminster, while there is a host of big hitters inside Downing Street who happen to be women, such as deputy chiefs of staff Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson, Principal Private Secretary Nin Pandit, Director of Policy Delivery Liz Lloyd and party General Secretary Hollie Ridley.
Another former Downing Street official defended Mandelson as simply the right person for the job, saying “he is a proper political operator” and “fortune favors the brave — you need to be in there fighting for your interests and understand how power works.”
Political counsellor at the British Embassy Senay Bulbul, who alongside Pierce has been credited with boosting U.K. links with MAGA Republicans, is expected to remain in Washington for Trump’s return to the White House.
Responding to attacks in the papers on Cooper, Kendall and Phillipson, one government aide said it was “a real shame.” They insisted: “No. 10 is really aware of these kind of claims [of a boys’ club] and I don’t think it comes from the very top.”
Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, said Starmer’s government was “still on probation” and “there’s not enough to convict” them of preferring men in key jobs over women — but “a circumstantial case” was starting to build.
Rutter, who was also press secretary at the Treasury under former Labour PM Gordon Brown, said that at that time the British government was “boys’ club central … it felt like you’d walked into the men’s changing room at the gym.”
She said that was “a long time ago” but there’s “a question of, are they also bringing in people who are going to bring back that sort of culture?”
Stefan Boscia contributed to this report.
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