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As I was writing this newsletter, I was having a concurrent conversation with a friend who sent me this hilarious message: “Vix, this is the LIVING EMBODIMENT of that Gavin and Stacey skit: ‘It’s the drama, Mick, I just love it!’”

What she was talking about – of course – was the tense, nail-biting livestream of Keir Starmer making his leaving speech (I wrote this sketch about how I found the ensemble of politicians lined up behind him at the lectern very amusing indeed – and not a little reminiscent of a troupe of backing singers at ABBA Voyage); then the array of ministers entering and exiting Downing Street, as new “Gen X PM” Andy Burnham hired (and fired) his cabinet.

I was watching avidly to see who would be getting the top jobs. But I had an ulterior motive, too – I wanted to see how many women there were.

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The Labour Party’s legacy with women isn’t brilliant – they haven’t had a female leader in their entire 126-year history – and under Starmer, key figures such as Angela Rayner and Jess Phillips were forced out (or forced to resign).

Even the Tories have had multiple female leaders and prime ministers, despite many of their members having Jurassic Period views on women.

Labour, however, has only ever appointed women (like Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman) to short-term – or acting – leadership roles. And, when women have been in positions of high power, they’ve been castigated for showing basic human emotions (like the time Rachel Reeves was criticised for crying in the Commons – I wrote about how quietly devastating I found it, at the time). I also found the party losing Ang both humiliating and sad.

My eyes, then, were entirely fixed on who might become “Andy’s Angels” (said ironically, by the way). And I’m afraid to report that it’s not hugely reassuring. Firstly, Burnham became leader unopposed — no other candidate, male or female, even got onto the ballot or hd a chance to challenge him. Secondly, we’ve gone from having one in three of the great offices of state being run by women under Starmer, to one in four. A reduction, then, in woman power.

Sure, we have veteran MP Yvette Cooper as health secretary, Louise Haigh returning to government to become first secretary of state, Ang coming back to housing, Lucy Powell in as education secretary and (sigh) Shabana Mahmood keeping her spot as home secretary, with her dreadful hardline stance on immigration. But while it might look good – Burnham has appointed 12 women to ministerial roles, out of a total of 23 – the roles held by women are arguably softer, less powerful, even “girly” offices of state (health, education). Yet we still have a male chancellor, a male PM, a male foreign secretary and a male defence secretary; meaning men are entirely dominating the “blockbuster” roles in office (and, when you look at the top advisory roles behind the scenes, well – they’re almost all men, too).

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood (AFP/Getty)

I’m going to focus on the positives, for now – I hope that under Yvette Cooper, the crisis in maternity care and medical misogyny that affects women in Britain every day is given greater attention. I hope that under Lucy, the woeful underfunding of our state education system – and the burden placed on teachers – is lifted and redirected. And I can only hope that when it comes to the “small boats crisis”, Shabana stops trying to “out Reform” Reform and instead thinks about one of my favourite lines from “Home”, a poem by the great Somali-British poet Warsan Shire:

“You have to understand, / that no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land /”.

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You can also write to me at victoria.richards@independent.co.uk – or to my alter-ego, Dear Vix, at dearvix@independent.co.uk.