Jess Phillips

Jess Phillips in 2019

Jessica Rose Phillips (née Trainor; born 9 October 1981) is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, she was Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding in Keir Starmer's Opposition frontbench from 2020 to 2023, when she resigned over a vote on the Gaza conflict. In July 2024, following the 2024 general election, she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office with her previous responsibilities.

Quotes

2015–2020

• I roundly told her to fuck off .... She fucked off. People said to me they had always wanted to say that to her, and I don’t know why they don’t as the opportunity presents itself every other minute.
  • Response to conflict with Diane Abbott in Parliament, as cited in "Labour MP Jess Phillips told Diane Abbott to 'f*** off' in Jeremy Corbyn sexism row" The Independent (17 September 2015).
  • During the first meeting of Labour MPs (14 September 2015) after Jeremy Corbyn became party leader/leader of the opposition, Phillips asked Corbyn why a woman had not been appointed to shadow any of the three other great offices of state (those being Home and Foreign Secretary and Chancellor). In response, Abbott had said "you're not the only feminist in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party]", but, in 2018, Abbott said Phillips had not responded to her in the manner described.

• I would do anything that I felt was going to make the Labour party win the general election because if I don't have that attitude then all I’m doing is colluding with the Tories.
  If that means making Jeremy better, I'll roll my sleeves up. If that's not going to happen – and I've said [this] to him and to 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.'
  • Interview with Owen Jones, cited by Frances Perraudin in "Labour MP Jess Phillips will 'knife Corbyn in the front' if he damages party", The Guardian (14 December 2015). Responding to criticism of her language, the article says Phillips tweeted: "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."

• I am, however, still dubious about the need for an international men's day in and of itself. For me it is up there with needing a white history month, or able body action day. Men are celebrated, elevated and awarded every day of the week on every day of the year. Being a man is its own reward. You hit the jackpot when you are born a boy child. Yes within your group things are tough for all sorts of reasons. None of them are because you are a man. You might be a poor man, a sick man, a marginalised minority ethnic man. Brother, I'm with you. I'll carry your banner, sing your song of freedom, I'll even carry your coats and make the sandwiches.
  • "We need International Men's Day about as much as white history month, or able body action day", The Independent (19 November 2015).

• One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people’s hands. Nothing changes. It is awful to hear people on the doorstep saying: "You politicians are all in it for yourselves." But that's nowhere near as bad as hearing that people feel they have no one to represent them. That's the disaster, not the fact that I have to weather a Twitter storm.
  • Interviewed by Rachel Cooke in "Jess Phillips: someone to believe in", The Observer (6 March 2016).

• Assange has, for seven years, evaded accusations of sexual violence in Sweden.
• The trouble is that many of those who like what Assange did with WikiLeaks are willing to look the other way about the accusations against him. The same people who would march for women's rights wearing pussy hats and waving banners about what a sexist pig Trump is are not feminist allies when their gods are found to be fallible. Platitudes about how we should never say women are lying when they come forward about rape suddenly don't fit any more and now women are making up sexual violence as part of an American conspiracy.
  • "Julian Assange’s case makes it clear women’s rights are still secondary to political games", The Observer (14 April 2019)
  • Assange entered the Embassy of Ecuador, London on 19 June 2012 and successfully gained asylum there. The claim was eventually revoked and he was removed on 11 April 2019.

2021–2023

• All the talk about rebuilding the economy post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-austerity, is always about diggers [...] I mean, do something to make sure everyone gets to play with the digger. What have they done to get more women signed up to digger courses? Make sure I can control a digger.
• [Referring to domestic violence.] It took until the third [statement during the first lockdown] for the prime minister to even mention it. And the first penny that reached the frontline was five months after the crisis started. It’s not for the want of people like me, in the beginning, being like "we should think about this". When Covid-19 was still just a thing in China, we were talking about rising rates of domestic abuse that were being reported by Chinese charities.
• We punish mothers for falling prey, rather than see how we can help them be the best moms that they can be and support them. We treat people terribly – we tell people that it's their fault that they're victims and that they're going to have their children removed because they haven't protected them.
  • Quoted in Emine Saner "Jess Phillips: 'Motherhood made me feel like I mattered. I wish that wasn't the case'", The Guardian (22 February 2021).

• Reading out the list of names of women killed by men compiled by the femicide census as I do every year on International Women's Day will, no matter what I do in the future, never be rivalled by anything else in my political life. It is the thing most strangers approach me about when I am out and about. I've been told so many times that I read out the name of someone's daughter, sister, friend or mother. It catches me off guard whenever this happens. I'm struck by the honour that families feel to see their loved one's name exists forever on the public record; a roll call akin to that of fallen soldiers.
  • "Every year I read out the list of women who have been killed by men – it never gets any shorter", The Independent (9 March 2023)
  • The Femicide Census was co-created by Karen Ingala Smith.

• [M]aking women as important as bins.
  • Interviewed by Janice Turner "Jess Phillips: 'The only way a woman will become Labour leader is if men don’t stand'", The Times (17 July 2021).
  • When asked on her greatest achievement as an MP. The then new Domestic Abuse Act introduced a statutory requirement for local councils to run women's refuges in addition to collecting refuse and running social services.

• In the Johnson and [Dominic] Cummings era of government, it was often assumed that anything that happened in Westminster was a group of political geniuses playing 3D chess and laying traps for the Labour Party (or opponents from within the government) to fall in to.
  It did sometimes feel true, although it was my experience that it was more by accident than design. I think it might be fair to say that they were playing 2D chess with quite some skill – until they weren't. Liz Truss, it would seem, cannot even play 1D chess. In fact, I am not sure her particular operation could be compared to the shape-sorting toys a one-year-old can master.
  • "Jess Phillips: This is what I witnessed last night in parliament – it was not OK", The Independent (21 October 2022).

• I have seen again and again how women's lives are considered a niche issue rather than the main event. If there are no powerful women in the room, it will continue to happen. I can already hear the rebuttal that Liz Truss was a woman and she was dreadful, but that argument only holds if you think that Liz Truss is the embodiment of all women and her failure belongs to us all.
  Liz Truss didn't fail because she was a woman, she failed because she was a right-wing ideologue who was unfit for the job. I can see plenty of those left around the cabinet table so they can't be too fussed about that.
  • "Jess Phillips: Where are all the senior women in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet?", The Independent (27 October 2022).

• You get low-level sexism all the time. I've defended other women in the chamber. I know women who work for me, certainly Black women, have found Westminster to be oppressive.
  Lots of men shush me because I'm quite rowdy. I get lots of comments like "calm down, the honourable lady acts with her heart". In the post-Me Too world, you get joking comments like "am I allowed to ask you to pass the milk?" or "I don't know if I'm allowed to say this to me, but you look lovely". ...
  Quite a lot of Tory men treat me like I'm some sort of exotic bird. People act like I'm either a pain or something to be marvelled at. You can see sometimes in meetings, women are asked to do things like get the tea. The expectation of them being stupid and annoying is quite common – that is very irritating. There is a power imbalance, there is an element of impunity.
  • On misogyny in the Palace of Westminster. Quoted in Maya Oppenheim "Fishnets and Tinder: Women MPs reveal toxic sexism in Westminster" The Independent (10 January 2023).

• The Russell Brand exposé by the Sunday Times and Dispatches for Channel 4 would have not long ago been overwhelmingly applauded as thorough, well-sourced and sensitively managed journalism. Instead, we have seen the exact reason why women don't speak up.
  • "How the MeToo backlash helped Russell Brand", New Statesman (20 September 2023).
  • The allegations were theorised by such individuals as Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson as an attempt to silence Brand. He denies the allegations of sexual assault and abuse made against him.

• This week has been one of the toughest weeks in politics since I entered parliament. I have tried to do everything that I could to make it so that this was not the outcome, but it is with a heavy heart that I will be leaving my post in the shadow Home Office team.
  On this occasion I must vote with my constituents, my head, and my heart which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.
  I can see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future.
  • "'Heavy heart': Jess Phillips’ letter of resignation in full", The Guardian (15 November 2023).
  • Extract from Phillips resignation letter from the front bench. She had served as shadow domestic abuse and safeguarding minister as part of the Shadow Home Office team. She voted for an amendment to the King's speech brought by the Scottish National Party demanding an immediate ceasefire in 2023 Israel–Hamas war, which was not Labour Party policy.

2024–present

• [Entering the elevator in Portcullis House] My husband's a lift engineer and he always takes the stairs.
• My only ambition in politics is to halve the levels of violence experienced by women and girls in a decade. Despite two women dying every week there is still no strategy or target around femicide. We live in a patriarchy still. It is 2024 but all our institutions are based on a 1950s, or 1850s or even 1750s ideal that doesn’t work for women
  • Interviewed by Eleanor Mills, as cited in "Jess Phillips: 'Lindsay Hoyle is obsessed with security after Jo Cox – that's why he acted that way'", The Telegraph (24 February 2024).

• [To pro-Palestinian hecklers] I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence.
• [The UK is] in desperate need and our politics [is] in even greater need of cleaning up and I thank everyone in this room for making a really good spectacle of proving that for me.
  • Comments from her acceptance speech after the votes cast were read out, as cited in Eleanor Lawson "Female MPs call harassment an assault on democracy", BBC News (5 July 2024).
  • At the 2024 general election, Phillips majority was heavily reduced by a candidate for the Workers Party of Britain who campaigned on a pro-Gaza stand.

• [The vandalising of cars used by Phillips' team were filmed for social media postings] The reason they're filming is to drive content, to incite more intimidation [...] In my constituency, the humiliation was by men, to women.
  And they wish to drive content ... that's what our politics has become - humiliation. Content-driven grift.
  • Speaking on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast with Beth Rigby (6 July 2024), as cited in "Tyres slashed and men screaming in women's faces: Jess Phillips on 'horrible' campaign", Sky News (6 July 2024).
  • Ellipsis in the original source

About Phillips

• She compares activist-journalist Owen Jones and Novara Media writers to noisy, overexcited children who have had too much sugar – "Who cares what they think, frankly."
  • Interviewed by Janice Turner, as cited in "Jess Phillips: ‘The only way a woman will become Labour leader is if men don’t stand’" The Times (17 July 2021).

• But what mattered most to [Karen] Ingala Smith were women’s names, not numbers. So in 2016 she was delighted when the Labour MP Jess Phillips – who’d previously worked for Women's Aid – asked to read them out on International Women's Day. Now this roll call of more than 120 stolen lives, recited to a hushed House of Commons, has become an annual commemoration. "Dead women is a thing we’ve all just accepted as part of our daily lives," Phillips said last year, when among the names was Sarah Everard. The list not only put male violence in the national spotlight but, says Ingala Smith, "Family after family have said how important it is to hear their loved one’s name read out in parliament, and know it is recorded in Hansard for ever."
  • Janice Turner "Counting Dead Women: my mission to save victims of violence", The Times (26 November 2022).