The House | New Group Of Labour MPs Aims To “Drag The Political Spotlight” Onto Men And Boys’ Issues

The release of Adolescence in 2025 sparked conversations about modern masculinity (Plan B Entertainment)

8 min read17 min

Donald Trump powered to victory in part because he won support among young, male Americans; many angry at a political class they believed disliked them.

The left’s response has been confused on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, a new group of Labour MPs is trying to change that – by providing a coherent response, in the hope of preventing a similar shift towards Reform by young UK males.

Netflix drama Adolescence, about a 13-year-old boy who is arrested for killing a girl in his school, provided a catalyst. The show sparked debates about young men being exposed to toxic influencers online, inculcating them with dangerous or retrograde ideas about masculinity.

The series’ popularity was seized on by Keir Starmer, with the Prime Minister calling for the drama to be screened for free in secondary schools across the country. Around the same time, several of his MPs set up a Labour Group for Men and Boys, to campaign specifically on areas like paternity rights and ensuring young men have positive role models.

After 10 months of organising in the background, the group held a formal launch event on 28 January. In a sign of the government’s support for the group, it was attended by Justice Secretary David Lammy, who has long been interested in ‘the politics of belonging’. The Deputy Prime Minister has been tasked by Starmer with leading a national men and boys summit later this year, and the group hopes to share their priorities with him.

The caucus has four co-chairs: Amanda Martin, Sarah Smith, Kenneth Stevenson and Alistair Strathern. On its wider steering group are Bayo Alaba, Calvin Bailey, David Burton-Sampson, Shaun Davies, Natalie Fleet, Justin Madders, Josh Newbury and Adam Thompson.

Members were encouraged that Starmer hosted Downing Street’s first ever International Men’s Day reception in November 2025, and believe the promised summit has come about partly as a result of their lobbying.

The MPs are concerned not just about boys being exposed to toxic content online but also about growing gaps in educational attainment and employment prospects compared with their female peers. While 66 per cent of girls met the government’s expected standard in reading, writing and maths in Key Stage 2 SATs in 2025, the same was true of only 59 per cent of boys.

The attainment gap persists into secondary school, as girls consistently achieve higher scores than boys in the vast majority of GCSE subjects, according to the Education Policy Institute. In last year’s results, just 20.5 per cent of boys’ exams achieved grade 7 or above, compared with 25.5 per cent of girls’ exams.

After their GCSEs, boys are likelier than girls to become so-called NEETs, meaning that they are Not in Education, Employment or Training. While the latest figures show that 512,000 men between the ages of 16 and 24 are NEETS, the equivalent figure for women is 434,000.

With 16- and 17-year-olds expected to be given the right to vote at the next election, meanwhile, research by More in Common has revealed that boys of that age are likelier than girls to vote for Reform UK. Polling in August 2025 showed that 25 per cent of boys aged 16 to 17 would vote for the right-wing populist party, compared with 19 per cent of girls.

The research also suggests that boys hold more socially conservative views on gender equality. Just under 30 per cent of 16- to 17-year-old boys believe that Britain would be better if we “returned to traditional gender roles between men and women”. Only 19 per cent of 16- to 17-year-old girls agree.

For too long, for lots of progressives, this has been an issue we’ve just ceded the field on

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According to Strathern, the new Labour group is “very deliberately cross-factional and cross-traditional”, adding: “This isn’t an issue that can be narrowed down to one policy area or one part of the party – this is a collective gap that we need to put right and one we all recognise the importance of acting on.”

Strathern admits that, over recent years, concern about men and boys has generally been viewed as a more conservative issue – and it remains contested political territory.

“For too long, for lots of progressives, this has been an issue we’ve just ceded the field on,” he says, adding that this has created a “vacuum” for “malicious influencers” and “toxic political actors”.

The four co-chairs are meeting on a weekly basis and plan to work with a range of interested charities.

“This can’t just be about capturing headlines or driving one news cycle,” says Strathern. “This has to be about a sustained effort to drag the political spotlight onto this issue and to force through the changes we know men and boys in this country are looking for the government to deliver on.”

One key area the group plans to campaign on will be to improve statutory paternity leave, which is currently the least generous in Europe. Members have already discussed the issue with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Business and Trade, as those ministries are leading the government’s review of parental leave and pay.

Apprenticeships and further education will be another focus. The group’s MPs were delighted by Starmer setting a new target at last year’s Labour conference for his government to get two thirds of young people into university, further education, or a “gold standard” apprenticeship.

“That’s a really great announcement,” says Smith, “but [it’s about] making sure that we meet that challenge; that we genuinely value our further education sector. The things the sector will talk about is rates of pay for the people working in that sector, versus teachers and the higher education sector.”

The group also wants to cheerlead for the government on legislative accomplishments they say will help men and boys but are not receiving much attention. Co-chair Amanda Martin, for example, is proud of her work lobbying for tougher action on tool theft.

She points to the Sentencing Bill, soon to receive royal assent, which will require courts to consider the full impact of theft on victims, including emotional distress and loss of income. In cases of tool theft, that will mean sentencing should reflect the total financial and personal loss to victims, not just the value of tools stolen.

The group’s members are not the only ones fighting to be heard, however, on wider concerns about policy affecting men and boys.

Just days before the release of Adolescence, the Centre of Social Justice (CSJ) published a report warning of a “growing divergence in boys’ and girls’ outcomes”, not just at school and in the workplace but also in social and political attitudes.

‘Lost Boys’ has gone on to become a landmark campaign for the think tank, with former Tory MP Miriam Cates – now a senior fellow at the CSJ – playing a key role in championing it.

Cates has welcomed the Labour group’s formation. “I think it’s a brilliant thing,” she tells The House. “Part of the problem with the whole debate around men and boys, and masculinity, is that it has been politically-coded in the past as being right[-wing]; that anybody who wants to talk about a crisis in masculinity must be right-wing. I think that’s quite unhelpful to making progress.”

There are, of course, some areas of difference between the CSJ’s campaign and what the Labour group will be lobbying for. The CSJ have recommended, for example, that “day care for children under the age of two should not be encouraged”, as the think tank points to research supporting “the importance of strong, consistent bonds between very young children and their primary caregivers”.

The Labour MPs insist their government’s expansion of free childcare will in fact allow fathers to have more contact with their children, as some will find they don’t have to work as many hours to cover those childcare costs.

The group’s members have an eye on the next election, as some acknowledge that failure to improve the lot of men and boys in the run-up to 2029 will make it harder to thwart the rise of Reform.

“This matters because it matters in its own right, but there’s obviously a political cost to not getting it right too,” says Strathern.

“If we’re not delivering on the issues that affect men and boys growing up in Britain today, speaking in terms that they can understand and relate to our priorities, and delivering in a way that they can really feel the tangible benefits of the action we’re taking, then we risk that vacuum being filled by more toxic voices.”