‘Blair Babes’ did not want PM in the photo, Harriet Harman reveals

A total of 101 female Labour MPs were elected in 1997. Tony Blair joined most of them on the steps of Church House in Westminster

The “Blair Babes” did not want Sir Tony Blair to appear in their photograph, Harriet Harman has revealed.
The then Prime Minister famously posed with the record-breaking intake of Labour women elected in 1997, on the day after the party’s landslide election victory.
A total of 101 female Labour MPs were elected to the Commons on May 1 that year, and Sir Tony joined all but five of them for a picture on the steps of Church House in Westminster.
But speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The Reunion programme, Ms Harman, who had just been appointed as the first ever Minister for Women, said their leader was an uninvited guest.
She said: “I organised a photograph of the hundred women and obviously notified Number 10 that we were going to do that. And we were horrified that Tony decided he was going to join us.
“We wanted it to be 101 strong women there representing women in the country and in Parliament. We didn’t want a man – any man in the situation.
“To be fair, Tony was the prime minister, he’d got a stonking majority, he’d supported all-women shortlists. So the women were very supportive of him. But I think what was not understood is that we needed to show we were there on our own terms.”
Ms Harman added that Sir Tony’s presence was reminiscent of Yul Brynner’s titular character in The King and I, who is constantly surrounded by his many wives.
“It looked like … a flock of sheep and he the only ram. We all looked like a supporting act.’
Ms Harman will enter the House of Lords later this year after she was nominated by Labour for a peerage in the dissolution honours list.
First elected to the Commons in 1982, she stood down at last month’s election having held a number of cabinet roles and served twice as acting Labour leader.
Sir Keir Starmer averted the criticism that Sir Tony faced by not participating in a photograph of the 2024 intake of Labour women, which consists of 190 MPs.
The picture, posted by Labour to its social media channels on July 17, was fronted by Cabinet ministers including Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor.
Thirteen Labour MPs then made it into the September issue of Vogue, which hailed them as “women MPs determined to change Britain for the better”.
These included Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary and at the age of 37 the youngest member of the Cabinet.
Zarah Sultana, who is among the MPs that have been suspended by Sir Keir for six months for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap, also made the list. 
The so-called “Brown Babes” held their own photo opportunity at the House of Commons in 2007 after Gordon Brown succeeded Sir Tony as prime minister.
Sixty-six of the 95 Labour MPs were in the photo, which was taken to mark the launch of a campaign run by Ms Harman to tackle issues including domestic abuse.
The term “Cameron’s cuties” was used to refer to female Tory candidates at the 2010 general election, the first poll at which Lord Cameron was in charge of the party.
Cameron’s cuties included former prime minister Liz Truss, Amber Rudd, a former home secretary, and Caroline Nokes, one of the most prominent centrist Tory MPs.