Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Jess Phillips Labour MP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: Well with the Brexit deadlock ongoing, there’s growing concern that other issues aren’t getting the attention that they deserve and it is certainly something that I felt when I travelled to Birmingham earlier this week to sit down with one of the country’s most outspoken MPs. Labour’s Jess Phillips backs a second referendum and we arrived at her office prepared to do an interview on the intricacies of Brexit but after spending a few hours here, listening to complex constituency cases on everything from housing to prisons to immigration, it felt right to start in a different place.

JESS PHILLIPS: The entire bandwidth of everything that happens in my constituent’s lives has been entirely taken away and there are real stories, real lives, real problems in our country that should be front page news in ordinary times and are now just being completely forgotten.

SR: What kind of thing are you talking about?

JESS PHILLIPS: So you have seen while you have been here this morning, we’ve got really, really difficult and complicated immigration cases, not dissimilar to Windrush, where my constituents have children who are not able to get educated because of failings in the Home Office, we’ve got issues, really serious housing issues where in my constituency at any one time there are 30, 40 families living in one room with no access to cooking facilities, sometimes not even washing facilities, for years, people are living like this for years and our local schools all around us are having to shorten their hours, lessen their number of teachers, we are at breaking point here and I don’t feel like Theresa May understands that and she stands in front of me at the despatch box and tells me I’m letting the people down. She wants to come and sit here for an hour.

SR: I guess what Theresa May might say is that she’s the one who’s trying to get on with it and that it’s MPs who are stopping her from moving on.

JESS PHILLIPS: Except that’s simply not true. She’s trying to get on with it, she’s trying to get on with what she believes is the best option. She believes that from a point of view of no experience of what it’s like to live around here for example and she doesn’t understand that a really bad deal for the economy in her constituency in Windsor probably won’t affect people that badly but people where I live are living on the edge and anything that pushes them even a fraction will push them over the edge. Most people here, where the biggest employer is the NHS or Jaguar Land Rover, the car industry – both are threatened by a bad Brexit deal.

SR: It has been quite an eye-opener for me spending the morning in your constituency office, just seeing the number of people coming through the door, hearing what they are talking about, the challenges that they face in their daily lives – you seem really quite angry.

JESS PHILLIPS: When I come here at the end of every day I am exhausted with vicarious trauma for the lives of my constituents. I mean obviously it’s not all bad, the people I see are the people in crisis and I see them all day, every day. I am so angry that their lives matter so little.

SR: In your constituency all four wards voted to leave the EU and yet you support a second referendum.

JESS PHILLIPS: Nobody who voted leave here has had a massive go at me. I mean you get the odd one who may be angry …

SR: Don’t they want you to respect their vote though and to carry it out?

JESS PHILLIPS: If they do, that’s not what they are saying to me. They trust me to try and do the best thing for them. Not all of them but no constituency is full of people who universally support their member of parliament. My constituents don’t all think the same thing, they didn’t all vote leave because they hate immigrants, they didn’t all … I mean lots of them are immigrants, they didn’t all vote leave because they wanted to take back control, they didn’t all vote leave because they hated the customs union – they all had different reasons. The vast majority of people voted leave because they wanted to show the system that they weren’t happy and who can blame them, who can blame them? But look, my constituents are, lots of them may well disagree with my position because it is one that I have come to, I didn’t get there easily but the position that I have come to is that Parliament can no longer deal with this and they may well disagree with me and that is democracy and if they disagree with me, they don’t have to vote for me and I may lose my job but frankly their jobs are more important.

SR: At the minute Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are having talks trying to thrash out some kind of compromise, would you like to see a situation where they come to a deal or would you see that as the Labour party facilitating a Conservative leader?

JESS PHILLIPS: Well I think they should have been talking a long time ago and actually I blame Theresa May entirely for that.

SR: But you hope that they come to a deal?

JESS PHILLIPS: I hope that they come to a deal but the deal I feel they have to come to, whatever machination it is of what the actual deal with the European Union could be negotiated, is I think it has to go back to the people. That’s the red line for me I’m afraid to say and Theresa May has her red lines so I’ll have a few.

SR: So even if, for example, Theresa May shifted her position all the way to say she is happy to sign for a permanent customs union, that wouldn’t be enough for you? You’d say it would have to go to a public vote?

JESS PHILLIPS: Well yes, that wouldn’t be enough for me.

SR: Do you think there is much frustration towards Labour for not having a clearer position, for playing politics?

JESS PHILLIPS: I think there is frustration for Labour. I can’t say that minutiae over the customs union is of massive concern to my constituents, that they speak of little else but the customs union in Birmingham Yardley!

SR: But is there a feeling that Labour are playing politics?

JESS PHILLIPS: I think there is a bit of a feeling of that. I think that certainly within the Labour party membership and the broader country that I think they haven’t been clear actually from the beginning and I think that actually that position was understandable to a point because we do have the most leave and the most remain constituencies. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Jeremy Corbyn was put in a really easy position and he just botched it but I think that there was a point where the sort of different briefings – whether it was Barry Gardiner comes out and say one thing, Keir Starmer comes out and says another…

SR: It has been quite confusing for journalists at times.

JESS PHILLIPS: It’s been quite confusing for Members of Parliament, members of the Labour party and members of the public so I think that at a point what you need to do is show some real leadership and say look, I know not everybody is going to agree with this but this is our position because at the moment we are sort of irritating everyone and pleasing no one. Time delaying when doing well I suppose gives a little bit of something to everyone but at the moment all we are giving everybody is a bit of annoyance.

SR: In your interview in the Times you said that you felt exhausted, you felt that you were at the end of the road for all of it. Is that how you still feel?

JESS PHILLIPS: When I was interviewed for the Times was literally the moment after I had shouted at Theresa May because there were people in my constituency being moved out of the hotel rooms that they were having to live in because Cruft’s was coming, the dog show, so dogs literally trumped my homeless constituents in those weeks and faced with something like that I was so, and I still remain so angry at the complete lack of political will to try and help people’s actual lives and to recognise why we have ended up in this situation and I suppose when I said I was at the end of the line, I feel constantly like we are failing in the political class. I really believe in Parliament, I really believe in the Labour party, I really believe in all of it but my faith is being challenged because I feel like the political class is looking after itself a little bit sometimes at the moment and that being the thing, when you look at my constituency and the homeless are being replaced by miniature Schnauzers.

JESS PHILLIPS: Well

SR: Some people took that about being at the end of the road as …

JESS PHILLIPS: Being the end of the road for the Labour party.

SR: Is that right?

JESS PHILLIPS: I think actually in the weeks since I did that interview I have a reignited flame for the Labour party.

SR: Why is that?

JESS PHILLIPS: Well it has come about because we are very much in Parliament at the moment, we are a united unit with a common purpose and it’s not factional, it’s not left/right, who’s …

SR: But it is over Brexit.

JESS PHILLIPS: It is over Brexit but within those different factions that have always existed there is crossover so at the moment you have got me and Clive Lewis working together hand in hand to try and achieve something that we think is best for the country and actually there is a sort of purpose and I think that if people like me leave the Labour party – and I have to say it’s not always easy when … I mean I have got people from the Labour party who are currently under police investigation for threatening to kill me.

SR: Why do you think you are such a lightning rod?

JESS PHILLIPS: Because I say what I think and because I can’t be controlled and anyone who wants to control you – in politics there are a lot of people who want to control you and make you say certain things whether that’s your party or your local membership and I have to say I don’t have a problem in my local membership, they are lovely kind people and reasonable and we have reasonable conversations but if you can’t control what a person says with the normal mechanisms of we’ll get rid of you, even a nice approach, if you can’t make them say exactly what you want and they want me to basically say Jeremy Corbyn is the best thing since sliced bread, if they can’t make you then like in any power and control model, violence is the way to control an uncontrollable person and so that’s why I became a lightning rod because I say what I think. And also I’m a woman, that doesn’t help. Also I think they consider that they have to intimidate me and try and make the things that I say not credible, they are constantly trying to … there’s a propaganda war that goes on that tries to take the credibility of your voice away because they’re worried that people listen to me.

SR: You said there about being a woman and you also said that Marxism has always had a problem with women because class is everything. Do you think that comes into it?

JESS PHILLIPS: There is a problem, and actually the left has always been the beacon of hope for women’s rights, but there is a section of the left that thinks that basically class is everything and sometimes it is like we are there to be helped rather than be agents of our own change but I’m happy to say that is rare but it is still definitely there that that sort of purist Marxist view that rich or poor is all that matters.

SR: So would you like the next leader to be a woman?

JESS PHILLIPS: Yes, of course, abso-bloody-lutely! Yes, I think it would be a massive embarrassment, amongst other things, if the Labour party once again fails to have a woman leader.

SR: Some people would like you to stand.

JESS PHILLIPS: I recognise that some people would like me to stand and you never know, maybe, one day but at the moment I feel so tired I can’t think of a job I’d least like to have than to be the leader of the Labour party, it doesn’t look like much fun at the moment.

SR: Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May seem quite stressed.

JESS PHILLIPS: They do both seem to have aged quite a lot over the period, yes, they do seem quite stressed. I imagine they probably could get on quite well really, they have got a lot of shared stress, maybe they could have a bit of a therapy session.

SR: Maybe that’s what’s going on in Downing Street.

JESS PHILLIPS: Yes, oh God, I haven’t slept for weeks, Theresa and things like I’ve missed all of the recent episodes of Fleabag, I really need to catch up!

SR: Jess Phillips, thank you very much. Jess Phillips there, speaking to me in her constituency office in Yardley.