According to a senior adviser to Sir Keir Starmer, Labour has a "embarrassing" problem with women in leadership roles.

On Sunday, Claire Reynolds—who formerly worked for Gordon Brown and Sir Tony Blair—was announced as the Prime Minister's new political director.

For the last three years, Mrs. Reynolds has served as the director of the Labour Women's Network. In addition, she had a part-time job as the business secretary for her husband, Jonathan Reynolds.

Her appointment is among personnel changes in Downing Street that have taken place since Sue Gray was ousted as Sir Keir’s chief of staff following a series of internal rows.

In a blog post on International Women’s Day in March, Mrs Reynolds said it was “necessary” for Labour to have an even split of male and female candidates at the general election.

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

“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 per cent in 2022 to an embarrassing 25 per cent in 2023.”

‘We will keep banging the drum’

Out of the 403 Labour MPs elected sitting in the Commons, 186 – which represents 46 per cent of all its MPs – are women. This is down from after the 2019 election when 51 per cent (104 out of 202) of all Labour MPs were women.

It is also lower than after the 2017 poll when the percentage of female Labour MPs was 45 per cent.

Mrs Reynolds has been credited with helping around 100 female Labour MPs win their seats through her campaigning and organising work with the Labour Women’s Network.

In the blog post, she said the group was “doing our bit” by training potential future female parliamentary candidates but added: “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 cultures still don’t lend themselves to equal power without endless intervention.

“But IWD is also a celebration, and there is much to celebrate… Both Reeves and Rayner are LWN parliamentary training graduates. Churchill may have cautioned against predictions, but I’m proud to predict some ceilings are about to get smashed.”

Rachel Reeves became Labour’s first female Chancellor and Angela Rayner the party’s first official female Deputy Prime Minister following the general election in July.

But Labour has yet to elect a female party leader, while the Conservatives have had three in Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss.

Party ‘couldn’t have someone better qualified’

Ms Reynolds has taken on the unenviable task of liaising with the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the week of what Sir Keir has said will be a “painful” Budget.

She will play a major part in dealing with Labour backbenchers, some of whom have already defied Sir Keir on issues including the two-child benefit cap and the winter fuel allowance.

More than 50 Labour MPs last month refused to vote for the Government’s plan to strip around 10 million pensioners of their annual winter fuel payment.

In July, seven Labour MPs including John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, had the whip removed for six months after they broke with the party line on the two-child benefit cap.

A Labour source said that the party “couldn’t have someone better qualified than Claire” to lead on relations between Labour, Downing Street and the parliamentary party.

“Claire’s been a candidate, councillor, adviser and organiser, building a fantastic network across the party,” the source said.

“She has supported hundreds, particularly women, to achieve their full potential in the party.”