Harriet Harman looks back on her Commons career, which began at a time when women made up 3% of MPs.
With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak firing the starting gun on the general election, the House of Commons will soon say goodbye to many familiar faces.
Mother of the House is a fitting title for Ms Harman, considering women’s issues are something she has campaigned on all her political career, and long before, which she said was not always welcome in the early 1980s. The initiative has been credited with helping to raise the proportion of female MPs within the party to 45%, according to the Labour Women’s Network.“I would be called a stupid cow from across the chamber,” she said. “People would constantly in the media describe my colleagues as saying I was thick.”Ms Harman rose through the Labour ranks to occupy various shadow ministerial posts until the party's 1997 landslide victory under Tony Blair.
“When I look back on my ministerial career, I think of being able to change the law on domestic violence, I think of being able to bring in the Equality Act,” she said.Ms Harman admitted there were “loads of cock-ups” during her career. She came under fire in December 1997 over cuts to lone-parent benefits and was sacked as social security secretary the following July. She would not return to the cabinet for a decade.
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