This would be to misunderstand what is going on. Eagle is either a stalking horse or a sacrificial lamb - pick your favourite zoological metaphor. Her function is to instigate a contest. There is no thought amongst those who are presently cheerleading her that she will actually end up being the Labour leader. Instead, the plan is that some equally dull, but better known and supposedly member-friendly figure - Alan Johnson or Tom Watson - will be the benefactor from the coming bloodletting.
All of this is actually pretty boring. There is little to say about it that hasn't already been said. Eagle's statement makes it clear that she doesn't understand the Labour Party as extending beyond the bounds of the PLP. The same can be said about the widespread bluster about 'Party unity' from within the PLP. The present composition of the PLP is a boil that needs lancing for the Corbyn leadership to prosper; but this has always been the case.
More fascinating is the Tory leadership race. The party of Family and Order not only use women to bring about leadership contests, they are even open to having a woman as leader. Whatever one might say about the authoritarian Teresa May or the gibbering idiot Andrea Leadsom, they are undeniably both women.
This was enough to get Guardian columnists excited and have people chattering about 'feminism'. It is good, they argued, to have women in prominent positions. To be indifferent simply because one such position is that of being Tory leader is to be unflinchingly dogmatic, to prioritise other concerns over women's liberation. Similar sentiment lurks behind the insistence that Margaret Thatcher should be admired as a 'strong woman' or campaigns to get more women onto the boards of FTSE100 companies.
Admittedly, the feminist credentials of one of the candidates have taken a bit of a knock since it became clear that she believes having had sex with a man and having functional ovaries makes her better suited to being Prime Minister than her opponent. Yet there are more fundamental reasons to worry about the trend towards seeing examples of liberation amongst the ranks of the powerful. For one thing, it's not clear where the limits lie: would the election of Marine Le Pen as French President be a step forward in the war against sexism? But more fundamentally, whenever you hear that something is 'good for women', you should ask yourself which women?
It is perfectly true that the relative absence of women from the Tory benches and the boardrooms is a product of patriarchy. Tory MPs are disadvantaged because they are women: however that disadvantage expresses itself and is experienced in a way that reflects their typical class, racial, and religious backgrounds, and their prominent position in a right-wing political party. Compare their situation with that of a lone mother, going without food to feed her children on ever-reducing benefits. Would the ascendence of either May or Leadsom - both enthusiasts for austerity - be good news for her? What about a woman who gets paid less for doing the same work as her male colleagues? A black woman facing deportation? A Muslim woman victimised by anti-terror laws? Should a lesbian, bi, or transwoman rejoice at the election of either homophobe?
The power feminism that celebrates the Tory leadership contest allows basically reactionary political ideas to clothe themselves with a bit of post-60s diversity. In this respect it is analogous to campaigns for Muslim leaders or gay CEOs. It provides an easy option for those who want to feel the world is changing for the better without having to exert any energy to make it do so, as well as for those who fear that if the world actually did get better this might not be good news for their bad balance.
This should not be news to anyone vaguely on the left. If anything it is the kind of question which marks out the boundaries of the left. Most people, however, have no fixed politics of any kind. And there is a debate to be had with them about how best issues around gender, race, and sexuality are addressed. And here the argument has to be made and won that the only way to make progress in these areas in a way that actually makes life better for the bulk of the population - rather than holding out the largely illusory hope of 'making it' to a place amongst an elite - is as part of a movement that recognises the way these concerns intersect with class, and which organises and campaigns on the basis of all of them.
Which is why, of course, the battle for the institutions of the labour movement matters.
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