That remark might drive some people round the twist. Perhaps that is about as honest an admission about why things sometimes work the way they do in SW1 as you’re going to get.
And there is widespread agreement in Westminster that women are so often held to different standards than the men they sit alongside. That’s not new.
We are a long way since the first female prime minister made time to iron her husband’s shirts, and be pictured doing it. But despite record representation of women, parity seems way off. Whether it’s how they look, how they act, what they wear, the lens applied to women is different.
A senior Labour figure accepts Angela Rayner made mistakes in her tax affairs, but suggests she’s always been treated more harshly than a man would have been in her position.
“She does manoeuvre, but she is also uncompromising and lives her life, has never changed her accent. And some of the men can’t cope with that.”
Another source points to how Starmer’s new pick for cabinet secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, has been briefed against and written about in acid terms in the last few days. It’s like, “How dare she be glamorous? All the bits they talk about – her ambition, in any man those would be seen as strengths. But because it’s her, it’s used against her”.
An investigation into one formal complaint against Romeo alleging bullying concluded there was no case to answer.
“The smears being thrown against her are reprehensible and hypocritical,” Rupert McNeil, former head of HR at the Civil Service said recently.
But does the notion of the “boys’ club” really make a difference? In a narrow way, it does right now, because dismantling the perception of it, and listening to a wider range of his colleagues is one of the tasks Starmer’s been set by his own MPs.
It matters profoundly that one half of the population, the narrow majority after all, is fairly represented by the politicians we choose to serve us.
And it matters too when it comes to having different perspectives in the rooms where decisions are taken.