Power, Peter Mandelson, and rage.

In case there is any doubt, I wholeheartedly support the Prime Minister. We have done great things as a government. But there is more to say.

Anger and grief in huge measure is what those of us from Labour’s progressive wing feel now. Peter Mandelson’s actions were horrendous and he will have to answer for them. We thought he shared our values. We were wrong.

Commentators are correct to say the signs were all there. The toxic combination of a man who could be so charming, and also so very awful. These should have been red flags.

It's worse than that, though. I spoke to leaders in local government at the weekend. I told them that women leaders carry the abuse we have experienced - whether as a teenage girl or a mature woman - with us all the time. We put it aside, because you have to. But when something like this happens, we become balls of rage. Explosive anger and grief.

So what is the answer? Not the rotten apple theory. Mandelson succeeded because the culture supported and rewarded him. So let's be honest about the toxic culture. We have to attempt to expose it, and undermine it.

Women partially gained the right to vote in 1918, along with the right to stand in elections to the Parliament. Nowhere in the legislation that made it happen, or in the standing orders for the House of Commons, does it say that we have equal right to speak once elected, and much less, the right to be heard.

It's our culture that doesn't properly hear women, which meant Peter Mandelson's power lasted for so long.

Nowhere in legislation are women granted equal power around the cabinet table, or equal say on what advisors do. Nowhere in the legislation does it explain how to overcome the assumption in the minds of others that women don’t have the same status, or that they can be used.

This is because there is a difference between freedom on the face of an act, and the greater freedom from inequality which is still a work in progress. And this inequality is in the nature of our political culture: a culture that supported Peter Mandelson and allowed behaviours that should have been beyond the pale. The culture meant that his network of other powerful men was thought of as an asset, not a risk.

The only way to make progress, then, is to change behaviours. Women have the right to be involved in politics. They need the de facto ability to experience politics in the same way men do.

Progressive politics has at its core the value of spreading power, and of enabling more people to come into politics, to take their own decisions for themselves, and to upend the traditional structures.

If we are to really change where power lies, we all need to change our behaviours.

It costs so little to listen to women. But a world in which women can feel less fear can build a new culture where the big cost of abuse is no more.

More widely, politics is full of good people, but looking in the wrong direction. The already powerful look up to the very powerful for decisions and support. The culture of deference ended in the 1960s, but it is alive and well in Whitehall.

It is time to put citizens first. It is time to stop looking for already powerful people to solve our problems, and to look out at the people we serve.

Traditional hierarchy has to die. It only rewards people whose class, whose gender or whose place at the top helps them stay there, no matter what.

We are all paying the price. It has to stop.