When Jess Phillips first entered parliament in 2015, she quickly made the headlines after she told Diane Abbott to ‘f— off’ when they had a disagreement over whether Jeremy Corbyn had appointed enough women to his shadow cabinet. Since then, Phillips is frequently in the news for speaking up on the political issues she cares about – recently going viral for a speech on olives in which she lambasted the government for earnings caps on immigrants.
I’m delighted to have Phillips as a guest on The Spectator‘s Women With Balls podcast. When we spoke last month, we discussed what it’s like to go viral, growing up in a political family and her perspective on class in Westminster.
The pros and cons of growing up in a political family with a father to the ‘left of Jeremy Corbyn’:
‘It’s a bit like being religious I suppose. I didn’t come from a religious background but I imagine it’s like going to church every Sunday – being brought up with a political belief system is the same as a moral belief system. What I would say is there was no choice in it – as I got older we were entitled to make our own decisions but I say that in the loosest sense as if we had voted Tory, you wouldn’t be able to admit that – it’s like you would have to come out as a Tory voter.’
Phillip’s parenting rules when it comes to her own children and politics:
‘My children saw Boris Johnson one day when we were in parliament and they were like “eww he’s a baddie” and I totally agree with them but my husband was like “no, he is a human being, we don’t behave like that”. My husband is much more reasoned.’
On working with people you disagree with:
‘I have to work alongside people who I fiercely disagree with. I actually think it is dangerous and a really bad example to allow that to turn into hatred. I can’t remember who said it but it’s like drinking poison everyday and expecting it to kill your enemy.’
Finally, we talked about whether politics had become more partisan in the time she has entered parliament and Corbyn became Labour leader:
‘I think politics has got much more partisan, and that’s not just the fault of the actors. It is culturally – we’ve all got more divided. Social media plays a massive part in it. And people are just so certain – they get stuck in their echo chambers and it reinforces that certainty. But when I say that, I think it is also a bit lazy to say that the country is massively divided. Because in my life in Birmingham, I don’t notice it very much. I don’t see the same aggression really, either within my own Labour party but also just my constituency and my friends and family and my home. So I actually think it’s off-putting for the country and is not representative. But it’s definitely got more divided.’
Given the backlash Phillips is receiving this weekend for suggesting to The Times that she wasn’t bound to the Labour party indefinitely if the party’s values changed, I suspect she may have hardened in that view.
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