Blair Babes or Blair's Babes is a term sometimes used to refer to the 101 female Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Labour Party elected to the

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in Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997, after images of the new Prime Minister Tony Blair with 96 of them on the steps of

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in Westminster were widely publicised. The photographs have been called "infamous". The phrase is attributed to the ''

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''. The term "Blair's Babes" has been criticised as trivialising women in politics, and the group of women MPs to which it referred have been studied as a group.

The record-breaking number of new women MPs

The 1997 general election saw more women elected to the House of Commons than ever – 120, exactly double the 60 elected at the 1992 general election. Aside from the 101 Labour MPs, there were also 13 Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats, and three from other parties (including Speaker Betty Boothroyd, previously a Labour politician). However, many of the new female MPs grew disillusioned, and nine either chose not to stand or lost their seats in the 2001 general election. Despite two female MPs winning by-elections between 1997 and 2001, and other women being elected, the total number of female MPs fell to 118 at the 2001 general election. A further 22 stood down or lost their seats at the 2005 general election, although the number of female MPs increased again to a new record of 127.

Perception of Blair's Babes

According to '' The Times'',

Margaret Moran Margaret Mary Moran (born 24 April 1955) is a former Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. Moran was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Luton South from the 1997 general election to 2010. In November 2012, jurors at Southwark Crown Cou ...

, MP for

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, described the "perception that the 1997 intake of female Labour MPs are all robotic clones" as "complete tosh".Mark Inglefield. "A fair cop", ''The Times'', London, 2 September 2000, p. 22 Moran said that she herself was not a Blair Babe, but a "Blair Witch". The columnist

Polly Toynbee Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 19 ...

condemned the term as a "casual, misogynist tag."

Implications of the term

The sociological implications of the term and the experiences of Labour's women MPs were extensively analysed by Sarah Childs in her 2004 book ''New Labour's Women MPs: Women Representing Women''. It has been identified as a trivialising way to refer to women in politics. Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair did not like the term. Margaret Moran said it should not be used. The term has also been used within Parliament to stigmatise some women MPs, separating "young attractive" Blair's Babes from "brainy babe . Some of the group believe that the term was harmful to their ability to bring about change, and that it encouraged a focus on their appearance. It has been reported that the ''Daily Mail'' used the term "to challenge Labour's claim that having 101 women MPs would make a difference".

The experiences of Blair's Babes as a group

This group of women MPs has sometimes been used as a way to examine women MPs' experiences in Parliament, as in a ''

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'' article by Rachel Cooke in 2007. Cooke's interviews of ten of the women found that some of them had experienced bullying, sexism and cliques in Parliament, as well as working hours that conflicted with family life. They have also been the subject of "where are they now?" articles. The journalist Lucy Ward has written of the group, As of the 2019 general election, there are ten Blair Babes left in the House of Commons, out of a total of 219 women MPs.

The record-breaking number of new women MPs

Perception of Blair's Babes

Implications of the term

The experiences of Blair's Babes as a group

List of Blair babes

References

Further reading

See also