Jess Phillips (politician)

Jessica Rose "Jess" Phillips (born 9 October 1981) is a British Labour Party politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Birmingham Yardley at the 2015 general election.

Early life and career

The youngest of four children, Phillips is the daughter of a "bearded (English) teacher", and a mother who was Deputy Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation. Her parents were politically active: "Growing up with my father was like growing up with Jeremy Corbyn" she told Rachel Cooke of The Observer in March 2016.^[4] Her childhood ambition was to become Prime Minister.^[5] Phillips studied Economic and Social History/Social Policy at the University of Leeds between 2000 and 2003. With her parents, she marched against the Iraq War.^[6] Between 2011 and 2013, she studied a postgraduate diploma in Public Sector Management at the University of Birmingham.^[7]

From 2010, Phillips worked for Women’s Aid.^[4] She had a post as a business development manager at the domestic sexual abuse charity, responsible for refuges of sexual abuse in Sandwell in the West Midlands.^{[8][9][10][11]} Before her work for the charity, she worked in her parent's company, Healthlinks Event Management Services Limited, which managed and directed large conferences for the NHS and other public bodies.^[7]

Philipps left the Labour Party during the years of Tony Blair's leadership. "I didn’t rejoin until after the 2010 election", she told Rachel Cooke. Her period at Women's Aid made Phillips "utterly pragmatic… I learned that my principles don’t matter as much as [people's] lives.”^[4] In the 2012 local elections, she was elected as a Labour councillor for Longbridge ward, taking the seat from the Conservatives.^[12] She was then appointed as the victims champion for Birmingham City Council, lobbying police and criminal justice organisations on behalf of victims.^{[10][11][13][14]} She also served on the West Midlands Police and Crime Panel.^[7]

Member of Parliament

2015 election and first months in the Commons

Phillips was selected to contest Birmingham Yardley in June 2013, a constituency at the time represented by John Hemming of the Liberal Democrats who in 2010 held the seat with a 3,002 majority.^[15] For the 2015 general election, Labour required a swing of 3.7% to take the seat,^[16] and after a swing of 11.7% Phillips achieved a majority of 6,595 or 16% of votes cast.^[17][18] She made her maiden speech on 28 May 2015, highlighting the issue of homelessness.^[19] In the 2015 Labour leadership election, Phillips nominated Yvette Cooper for leader and Tom Watson for deputy leader.^[20][21]

Phillips verbally clashed with fellow MP Diane Abbott on 14 September over the gender composition of Jeremy Corbyn's first shadow cabinet. After she asked Corbyn why he had failed to appoint a woman to shadow the great offices of state, Abbott accused her of being "sanctimonious" and pointed out that Phillips is "not the only feminist in the PLP (Parliamentary Labour party)". Corbyn did not intervene in the dispute.^[22] Owen Bennett wrote: "Talking to The Huffington Post UK, Ms Phillips, who despite being elected in May has already earned a reputation for being one of the most outspoken MPs, said: 'I roundly told her to fuck off.' When asked what Ms Abbott did after that suggestion, Ms Phillips replied: 'She fucked off.'"^[23]

During the 2015 Labour Party conference on 28 September, she had an exchange on Brighton beach with the former MP George Galloway in which she called him a "rape apologist" (a reference to Galloway's comments in August 2012 about the allegations made against Julian Assange).^[24] In a tweet, Galloway said that he had never heard of Phillips, accused her of being a liar, and rejected her assertion that they had an exchange.^[24][25] A few months later, in February 2016, Galloway referred to the "many times" he had made the comments about Assange, when asked if he regretted making them, and "I'm not minded to respond to" Phillips "whose role in life seems to be to slander and insult people".^[26] In September 2015, Phillips was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Lucy Powell, then Shadow Education Secretary.^[27]

In October 2015, Phillips sparked a social media storm after she mocked the Conservative MP Philip Davies for trying to get a debate about International Men's Day.^[28] Phillips openly laughed and pulled faces while Davies spoke, and then stated that: "You’ll have to excuse me for laughing. As the only woman on this committee, it seems like every day to me is International Men’s Day."^[29][30] Davies responded by stating that, "If a male MP had reacted in that way about the need for debate on International Women’s Day, there would have been hell to pay. It’s entirely possible you’d be removed from Chambers or have the Whip removed. I’m surprised she finds that a laughing matter."^[29][28] Colleagues from both the Labour and Conservative parties agreed with Davies, and permission for a debate in Westminster Hall on 19 November was eventually granted.^[30] Phillips was not present at the debate, partly because she did not want her clash with Davies to become the dominant issue. She wrote in The Independent on 19 November: "I commend Philip Davies for changing the thrust of the debate to focus on male suicide — but in and of itself this day serves no useful function".^[31] Following Phillips's objections she was subjected to rape threats on social media.^[32][33]

In November 2015, Phillips said to Helen Pidd of The Guardian: "There’s something wrong with the Labour party. There’s something wrong with the fact that women never rise to the top", pointing to female leaders of the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives.^[8] Phillips told Owen Jones in December 2015, that she had told Corbyn and his staff "to their faces: 'The day that ... you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won't knife you in the back, I'll knife you in the front'", if it looked as though he was damaging Labour's chances of winning the 2020 general election.^[34] John Mann said Phillips would make "an ideal Labour leader" and had been a "breath of fresh air ever since she arrived and an antidote to the internalised battle between New Labour and Momentum". Responding to criticism about her use of language in the interview with Jones, Phillips said on Twitter: "I am no more going to actually knife Jeremy Corbyn than I am actually a breath of fresh air, or a pain in the arse".^[34]

Since January 2016

In January 2016, Phillips said on Question Time that events akin to the mass sexual assaults in Cologne happened every week on Birmingham's Broad Street. Her remarks provoked widespread criticism and calls to resign,^[35][36][37] and local police denied her claims.^[38]

In the month's Labour reshuffle, she accused the Labour leadership of giving women a "pat on the head", rather than appoint women to positions in the party. "I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn hates women – I don’t think Jeremy hates anyone", she wrote in The Guardian, but "in the hard left of British politics lurks a gruesome misogyny" which has "a special talent" for discriminating against women.^[39][40] She stepped down from her role as PPS to Lucy Powell, the former Shadow Education Secretary, in June 2016.^[41]

After several thousand threatening or demeaning tweets were sent to Phillips within 36 hours during May 2016, which Twitter said did not break its rules, Phillips in The Daily Telegraph accused the social media company of "colluding with my abusers".^[42][43] Her response to the murder in June 2016 of her friend, the Labour MP Jo Cox, was that it "makes me want to fight harder".^[44] She wrote of them both receiving online abuse and threats: "Usually, we both shrugged it off, never feeling any real fear. Conversations usually ended with a defiant, 'we won't let the bastards grind us down' and a cuddle".^[44] In August 2016, she told The World at One on Radio 4 that a "panic room" was being installed in her constituency office which now has an alarm system. At her home, improved locks have been fitted.^[45]

She became chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party following a vote in September 2016, defeating her predecessor Dawn Butler, who is considered loyal to Jeremy Corbyn.^[46][47]

Phillips advocates a third option of "X" as a gender in documents, for people who identify as neither male nor female.^[48]

Phillips holds the view that the Labour Party should ban men from standing in all future by-elections until half the party’s MPs are female. ^[49]

References

External links

• Phillip's article in the Progress Magazine.