Jeremy Corbyn at the Refugees Welcome rally after winning the Labour leadership race. Credit: The Weekly Bull/Flickr.
After a seismic weekend for British politics, which saw the left candidate for the Labour leadership, Jeremy Corbyn, lurch from rank outside to victor with a 59% victory, what does his victory mean for women? Within 48 hours of winning, the new leader had appointed his shadow cabinet. Many people responded to the initial appointments, specifically shadow chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary which were all handed to men. More than half of the cabinet posts went to women, but critics have focused on the fact that the leader and the three top shadow ministers are all men. As Caroline Molloy pointed out, the sudden interest in gender parity from commentators who have backed austerity for years is as remarkable as it is disingenuous.
John McDonnell, the new chancellor, argued that the insinuation that these posts were the ones that mattered belongs to an outdated idea that the foreign secretary, for instance, is more powerful than the health or education secretary. Corbyn has hinted that Britain needs to move away from the grandstanding militarism characterising a lot of the past decade or two of politics, and that the political obsession with Britain’s position on the world stage is unhelpful and destructive, tending as it does towards militarism over peacekeeping.
