Labour is still blind to women In case anyone wasn’t already 100 per cent clear on the state the Labour Party was in, at the second […]

In case anyone wasn’t already 100 per cent clear on the state the Labour Party was in, at the second leadership hustings on Thursday night, someone sent a clear visual clue. Midway through the evening event in Gateshead, the lights went out, leaving Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith flailing around, answering questions about power they will never have, in the dark.

All grimly hilarious, but even before the brief power cut, there was something of the Dark Age about proceedings. Two white men, in white shirts and dark suits, talking about mandates and strong leadership. It felt fatally out of step with the times.

Meanwhile, Labour also announced their candidates for the mayoral elections in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands this week: they will be Steve Rotherham, Andy Burnham and Sion Simon.

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Where are the women?

There’s something missing here – and it isn’t working lights. Where are the women? Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, foresaw the all-male mayoral lists and raised it with Corbyn months ago, but apparently received no reply. “All the mayors can go an actual man date now,” she tweeted when the results were announced. “We can serve the tea.”

It’s not too much of an exaggeration. Aside from Diane Abbott, who has become the unofficial mouthpiece through which Corbyn speaks to the people, female voices on the left are increasingly hard to find. Promising, talented and high-profile MPs like Phillips, Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper and Sarah Champion, have shrunk to the margins, settling for howling into the Twitter void over having a seat at the table.

More than 40 per cent of Labour MPs are female – the highest proportion for any major party – but those numbers have not converted into power. In 116 years, the country’s most progressive party has never been led by a woman. Indeed, no woman has ever placed higher than a man on a leadership ballot. Angela Eagle never made it to the hustings. Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall came in third and fourth behind Corbyn and Burnham. Abbott came fifth behind four men in 2010. And in 1994, Margaret Beckett trailed Tony Blair and John Prescott.

Top jobs for the boys

It didn’t start well when Corbyn, having appointed more women than men to his first Shadow Cabinet in September, gave all of the top jobs to men. The party’s leader, deputy leader, shadow Chancellor and 10 of its 12 mayors are men. Only one woman – Luciana Berger – made it on to the shortlists for the mayoral candidates. A “new, kinder politics”, it might be, but it also appears to be blind to half of the population – and 40 per cent of the party MPs.

In fact, it’s not even a new, kinder politics. Eagle, who was called a “treacherous lesbian” and had a brick hurled through her office window because she dared to challenge Corbyn, has warned that the party is in danger of stealing the “nasty party” crown due to widespread misogyny and other prejudices. Two weeks ago, 40 of Corbyn’s female MPs signed a letter calling for him to do more to combat “an extremely worrying trend of escalating abuse and hostility”.

Rape and death threats

Rape and death threats have become par for the course for the female Labour MP, particularly if they happen to oppose the leadership. If Corbyn is not seen to take the strongest line on this, it sends a damaging message to female voters, and Labour MPs of the future.

Women are becoming invisible in Labour at precisely the wrong time. There is a new female Prime Minister and the march of women leaders across the UK and the globe has achieved an unstoppable momentum. As David Cameron pointed out in his final PMQs, the Conservatives are winning the equality race. “Two nil. And not a pink bus in sight.”

Corbyn most likely takes the “best person for the job” approach, but his party has a duty to represent the make-up of the nation. The persistent sidelining of women – and the unwillingness to acknowledge it as a problem – risks making Labour look even more off the mark, even less likely to take back power. And who would have thought that was possible?