Haigh cites sexist Starmer cabal as Burnham prepares for UK premiership
Andy Burnham is expected to become UK prime minister within days after his campaign manager, former transport secretary Louise Haigh, accused Keir Starmer’s inner circle of a coordinated sexist briefing campaign that contributed to the government's collapse.
Andy Burnham is expected to be confirmed as UK prime minister in a matter of days, a rapid ascent to power masterminded by a former cabinet minister who has just levelled explosive allegations of sexism at the outgoing government.
Louise Haigh, who ran Burnham’s campaign in Makerfield, accused Keir Starmer’s closest allies of operating a “cabal of men mistreating women” inside Downing Street. Speaking to the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Haigh said Morgan McSweeney and Starmer briefed “consistently and viciously” against her after she was sacked as transport secretary over a 2013 phone fraud case.
Haigh maintains she told Starmer about the offence years beforehand, but was met with vague justifications upon her dismissal. “Both Morgan [McSweeney] and [Starmer] kept saying ‘well, additional information has emerged’, but at no point would any of them tell me what that additional information was,” she said. “To pretend that I hadn’t told him and to brief so consistently and so viciously for quite a number of weeks after that was a deliberate attempt to knock my character down.”
She said this toxic “boys’ club” culture also targeted Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson, Angela Rayner and former chief of staff Sue Gray. “The idea that there wasn’t a cabal of men that were deliberately mistreating women around the government is just fanciful,” Haigh added.
A new economic architecture
Haigh’s exit from the cabinet directly paved the way for Starmer’s political demise. As a backbencher, the Sheffield Heeley MP organised a welfare rebellion that shattered the prime minister’s authority before persuading colleagues to back Burnham as his successor.
Haigh is widely tipped for a return to the cabinet under Burnham, though she confirmed it would not be as chancellor. Her comments signal the new administration's likely approach to economic governance. She has accepted that the government will not pursue her idea of splitting up the Treasury, warning it “would just drag everything down and be a huge distraction”.
Instead, she argued for centralising economic strategy directly within the prime minister’s office to counterbalance the finance ministry. “There needs to be a proper beefed up economic unit in Number 10 that both the prime minister and the chancellor have access to, and that can give the prime minister a full suite of advice when they’re making these huge decisions that affect the country,” she said.
