The hysterical sneering directed at Harriet Harman over her comments about Claire Coutinho isn’t clever political commentary. It is counterproductive and demonstrates a total misunderstanding of meritocracy.
I say this as someone on the right who spends most of my time arguing against Labour’s prescriptions: the reaction over the last 24 hours has been embarrassing. Rather than demonstrating a confident, forward-looking conservatism that measures people purely on drive, talent, and capability, the right has jumped straight into a reflex culture-war script.
Let’s strip away the bad-faith noise. Listening to commentators, you would think Harriet Harman claimed Claire Coutinho was handed a promotion solely because she was pregnant, as if her appointment were some tokenistic tick-box exercise.
She said nothing of the sort.
Appearing on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Harman directly praised Kemi Badenoch for elevating capable women:
“Woke is as woke does. You’ve done it, Kemi. Claire Coutinho took Andrew Griffith’s job as shadow business secretary. And actually, she was one of a number of women who was promoted by Kemi Badenoch and also is on maternity leave. I’m giving Kemi Badenoch a woke badge for that. That is a very progressive thing to do to give her a promotion. Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day.”
Harman’s point was plain, analytical fact: in modern Britain, a woman can be judged as the best person for the job, awarded the post on merit, and take that role on, while seven months pregnant and preparing for maternity leave.
Why on earth is anyone on the right picking a fight over that?
It is disappointing to see Kemi Badenoch’s team allow this moment to be used for political point-scoring. This is, after all, the same Kemi Badenoch who faced backlash during the leadership contest for suggesting statutory maternity pay was “excessive” and had “gone too far.” When a Labour veteran publicly points out that Badenoch turned around and promoted a heavily pregnant colleague to a frontline role, that isn’t an attack. It is pointing out that the shadow cabinet put talent ahead of physical circumstances. Turning that observation into a cheap political row does a disservice to everyone involved.
Harriet Harman is nearly 80 years old. For almost the entirety of her adult life, a woman in line for a major promotion who announced a pregnancy would have been quietly sidelined, passed over, or frozen out entirely. That wasn’t a myth; it was standard corporate and political reality.
In fact, there were no statutory maternity leave provisions for Cabinet ministers in the UK until Suella Braverman went on maternity leave as Attorney General in 2021. Up until five years ago, a female Cabinet minister who wanted to start a family had to rely on informal, discretionary arrangements or step down.
Even today in 2026, organisations like Pregnant Then Screwed exist because thousands of women every year still face real workplace penalties, demotions, and subtle career sabotage the second they announce a pregnancy. The law protects rights on paper, but cultural attitudes dictate workplace reality. Pushing top talent out of the workforce simply because of biological timing is bad for business, bad for the economy, and bad for society.
Lately, a bizarre argument has gained traction on the right: the idea that if an action aligns with equality protections, calling it “progressive” is somehow an insult, or that doing the right thing is merely “following the law.”
That is total nonsense. When I marry a man, that will still represent a progressive milestone for individual freedom, regardless of the fact that same-sex marriage has been statutory law for over a decade. Protecting pregnant women from workplace prejudice is progressive. Equal treatment under the law is progressive. True meritocracy—where an individual is judged purely on their ability, free from arbitrary barriers—is a fundamentally sensible, right-leaning principle.
The word “progressive” is not automatically a dirty word. Many of us benefit directly from equality laws. The entire purpose of maternity discrimination law is to ensure the best person for the job actually gets the job, even if they happen to be taking leave in a few weeks. Without those protections, risk-averse bosses simply default to promoting whoever is most convenient at that exact moment.
Instead of jumping straight into a culture-war, people should state the reality: Claire Coutinho was the best person for the job, and we live in a country where pregnancy is no longer an automatic barrier to high office.
Harriet Harman spent decades fighting the legal and political battles that made that environment possible. Attacking her for contextualising it isn’t strong, principled, or “anti-woke.” It is foolish, historically illiterate, and ungrateful.
