‘An IWD prediction: The next parliament will be the most diverse ever’

Winston Churchill once joked that “a politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.”

It might feel awkward to begin an article about Labour women by quoting a Conservative bloke, but he was right to note predictions in politics are a risky business. Yet, this International Women’s Day, I’m going out on a limb to make a bold one. The next Parliament will be the most diverse in history.

I’m only applying one condition to this prediction. It needs to be a Labour government. Any iteration of Labour government. Whether Labour crawls over the line with a majority of one, or smashes it out of the park with a landslide, there will be more women MPs in the House of Commons than ever before, and progress against other measures, too.

How so? Well, frankly, we are on course to replace Tory men with Labour women.

We’re on course to replace Tory men with Labour women

After recent by-elections, currently, 226 out of 650 Members of Parliament are women, which is 34.8%. Meanwhile, 45% of Labour candidates selected so far are women, with the Parliamentary Labour Party currently at an all-time high of 52.7% women.

Selections are ongoing, and yes, I’m doom-scrolling for non-battleground selection announcements as frequently as the next political geek. So we don’t know for certain whether that 45% figure will notch up, or not. However, there is already a sufficient proportion of women selected to contest winnable battleground seats to be sure that any degree of outright win for Labour would mean an increase on that 226 figure, and an improvement on that 35%. Against any measure, this will be a historic achievement.

Labour’s likely success is made starker still by the Conservative’s comparative failure. The Tories may be able to boast three female Prime Ministers to Labour’s increasingly conspicuous zero, but they have no such record on equalising women’s representation across the House.

The Tories are selecting too few women and haemorrhaging female talent

Only 25% of Tory MPs are women, and 26% percent of candidates selected so far. The Conservatives are also haemorrhaging female talent, with Tracy Crouch, Dehenna Davison and Chloe Smith among the surprise retirements already announced.

A Labour government would also likely mean enhanced diversity in other respects. 15% of Labour candidates define as Black, Asian or another ethnic minority; 22% percent define as LGBT+; and 13% have a disability.

Much of this intersectionality comes from the women PPCs. Take ethnicity, for example. Think of Labour-held seat inheritors of colour Miatta Fahnbulleh, Harpeet Uppal, Abtisam Mohammed and Satvir Kaur; and of Kirith Entwistle, Fazia Shaheen and Juliet Campbell, all of whom need negligible swings (under 4%) to make Labour gains. The face and voice of the Commons will leap another hurdle towards looking and feeling like today’s Britain.

It would be remiss of me not to restate, at this stage, the popular mantra that Labour has a proud record as the party of equality. Indeed it does. That said, we are not standing on the precipice of the most diverse Commons ever on the strength of our values alone, nor are we here by accident.

Labour’s successes are down to training programmes

At LWN, we train Labour women to be unapologetic about claiming their achievements. Therefore, we had better practice what we preach.

65% of the women selected so far in England and Wales are graduates of Labour Women’s Network training, including the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Scheme, the LWN Political School, and our overwhelming popular selections workshops. Over the past two years LWN has trained almost 1000 Labour women. Led by the legendary Nan Sloane, LWN training is the best in the movement. It is combines intensive support with unerring doses of political reality. It pulls no punches, and it works.

LWN also successfully pushed for selection campaigns to be shorter (shrunk from 12 weeks to six) and cheaper (with a new spending cap) in an attempt to equalise the playing field for women, and mitigate the impact of caring responsibilities and lower pay as barriers to women’s chances of success.

Selections have improved – but they’re not perfect

No-one is suggesting that selections are now a perfect meritocracy, or that they are especially enjoyable for hopefuls. They are however categorically fairer and less arduous as a result of these changes.

LWN also knows from our thirty-six year history that what gets measured, gets done. We therefore kept a watchful eye on Labour’s progress on selecting women through our Selection Tracker, published weekly, so no slumps went unnoticed, and credit was given where it was due.

We continue to keep up the pressure.  Any last-minute retirements must be disproportionately filled by women, in order to up that current 45% candidacy figure closer to the necessary but elusive 50%.

In other fields, such as local government, progress has lapsed

We also need to translate our success in diversifying parliament to other levels of public life. Notably, Labour council leaders have gone backwards from 30% in 2022 to an embarrassing 25% in 2023. LWN are again doing our bit training a pipeline of possible future contenders, but that “party of equality” line needs to be urgently actualised in certain respects.

International Women’s Day remains a political protest, and LWN will keep banging the drum. Our structures and culture still don’t lend themselves to equal power without endless intervention.

But IWD is also a celebration, and there is much to celebrate. I am especially looking forward to applauding the first woman Chancellor of the Exchequer and the first woman Deputy Prime Minister. Both Reeves and Rayner are LWN parliamentary training graduates. Churchill made have cautioned against predictions, but I’m proud to predict some ceilings are about to get smashed.