Andy Burnham is facing a demand from female Labour MPs to guarantee that half his government will be women should he become prime minister. A draft letter from the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party (WPLP), seen by the BBC, insists that Labour “lead by example” on equality, warning that without change at the top, the party cannot be seen as the party of equality. The letter points to the “toxicity and misogyny within our own party and government” and calls for a female deputy prime minister and a separate first minister of state for women.
Burnham, expected to remove Chancellor Rachel Reeves from No 11 — the first woman to hold that post — and replace her with one of several male contenders, has moved to reassure the WPLP. At a meeting this week, he promised to sack any staff who undermined women in his team. The draft letter, yet to be sent, states: “We have fought very hard to achieve our electoral success only to find that we are battling within our own party to be heard as women.”
“Female Labour MPs demand 50:50 cabinet from Burnham, while Mehdi Hasan says no one in America cares about UK politics.”
The pressure comes as the Labour leader prepares to bring back New Labour ally James Purnell as chief of staff, a role previously shared by two women under Sir Keir Starmer. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is a possible contender for chancellor, while speculation surrounds his brother David returning as foreign secretary, perhaps via the House of Lords. One WPLP member suggested it would not be acceptable “to have more Milibands in the great offices of state than women”.
But across the Atlantic, Burnham’s name carries no weight. Mehdi Hasan, a former New Statesman political editor who now runs the media company Zeteo, told the New Statesman’s The Exchange podcast that “no one in America cares” about the UK. “If you walk towards Capitol Hill and flag down a passing member of Congress, they would not be able to tell you Andy Burnham’s name. Many of them would struggle to tell you Keir Starmer’s name,” Hasan said. He noted that the United States has “a special relationship with Israel” and that British politics receives “little to no coverage in the mainstream media” in the US.
Hasan, who moved from magazines to television and founded Zeteo in 2024, said that while Americans love Brits, the accent and the royal family, “British politics, no”. The comment echoes his own earlier dismissal of such a view: “About 15 years ago when I lived in the UK … I remember having a coffee with a friend … He said, ‘When you live in the US, you realise no one cares about the UK.’ I thought that was a very arrogant thing to say … And now here I am, saying the same thing to you!”
The WPLP’s 13-point plan also demands zero tolerance of bullying or misogyny from No 10 staff and parliamentarians, and action to limit online abuse and deepfakes, particularly threats to female MPs from ethnic minorities. The group previously put pressure on Starmer to appoint a woman as first secretary of state.