Blair Babe

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 British House of Commons in Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997,[1] after images of the new Prime Minister Tony Blair with 96[2] of them on the steps of Church House in Westminster were widely publicised.[3] According to The Times, Margaret Moran, MP for Luton South, described the "perception that the 1997 intake of female Labour MPs are all robotic clones" as "complete tosh".[4] Moran said that she herself was not a Blair Babe, but a "Blair Witch".[4] The columnist Polly Toynbee condemned the term as a "casual, misogynist tag."[5]

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.

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.[6] Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair did not like the term.[7]

As of the 2019 general election, there are only 10 Blair Babes left in the House of Commons.