'I hated it': Jess Phillips on life inside Keir Starmer's government

0:02Jess Phillips: Sky News, the full story first.

0:13Jess Phillips: I just, I hated it. I hated being a government minister, actually. I hated it. Final question, are you going to run as an MP in 2029? So I'm a zealot, really, and that is problematic in government. and I don't underestimate that.

0:41Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. This is one of our summer specials where we're able to go one-on-one and have a bit more time to talk between us in a way we don't get time for when politics is going at 100, maybe 1 ,000 miles an hour. So this is going to be me talking to Jess Phillips, which makes me very happy. Hello, Jess.

1:05Jess Phillips: Hello, my dear. And we're going to use this podcast to reflect on phase one of this Labour government. Now we're moving into phase two. It's another reset. Had a few of those. It is an actual reset. It's actually proper. It's not just a stuttering false start reset. It's a proper reset. I mean, it's a new prime minister. I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street. The seventh prime minister since 2016. Making this a moment for reflection and new resolution. And Jess, I wanted to talk to you today about your time as a minister. lift the lid a bit on that.

1:54What did you achieve? What didn't you enjoy? What were you glad to be doing? And what you think the coming months might look like. But look, I want to start a couple of years ago.

2:07Jess Phillips: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that reception. What an amazing reception. We did it.

2:19We're now two years into this Labour government. Keir Starmer's been deposed as leader. How do you, as a Labour MP, process going from a landslide two years ago to the collapse of Starmer's government in just two years?

2:37Jess Phillips: No, it's funny because you very rarely look back at it in those terms. I'm sure he is pausing to reflect on it. But being on the inside within those two years, it was like death by a thousand cuts, the sort of like the salami slicing of credibility and power, really. You start to see power ever away from a person. And so it's funny, like if I were to reflect like in in a hundred year period, it seems mad that like in this two years somebody won an absolute landslide. And then two years later is, frankly, really detested by the public and also has lost all of the influence over their people. It seems mental when you think of it like that.

3:31Jess Phillips: But when you're on the inside, it happens slowly and it creeps up on you. And look, I came into the election. It didn't feel like a landslide to me. I know, because you just only just scraped through, didn't you? scraped through I was I think actually and at the time we didn't talk very much about it certainly during the election those of us who were facing real challenge in like inner city seats against and it was specifically against Keir Starmer himself and some of the things that he had said and done with regard to Gaza and the Middle East. Thank you. See we're going to continue with the class that we had during the campaign.

4:19It's all right.

4:23Jess Phillips: The election that I have... There's absolutely no doubt that I won my election in spite of Keir Starmer and others didn't make it over the line. People like Thangam Debenair in Bristol, John Ashworth in Leicester. So actually to me it never felt like this sort of massive landslide It was described as a loveless landslide and the reason that was I mean it wasn't even loveless where I live it was hateful Yeah but it was 170 MPs, it was a lot but it was called loveless because the vote share for Labour was so low. That idea of a loveless landslide you felt it very acutely so presumably when things started to go a bit wrong you'd already priced some of that in that it was going to be hard yards for him.

5:11Jess Phillips: I mean look I had priced in from the day before in fact the last general election if I won that would be the last time I could win my seat with Keir Starmer as the leader I've known that for a long time in fact when Darren Jones texts me just after the local elections and he's like the prime minister's right hand man he texts me and was like oh you know how are things in Birmingham now after the local elections in 2026 Birmingham is frankly a basket case but I just said oh you know my constituents disliked Keir Starmer before it was trendy. Yeah, I'm going to come back to it in a bit because largely it was about Labour's position on Gaza.

5:51It deeply upset many people in your constituency in particular. Before we get into that, you just said there, you knew at the last general election you wouldn't win another election in Birmingham Yardley as MP under Keir Starmer. do you feel differently now that Andy Barnum is in the chair? Time will tell. Okay.

6:16Jess Phillips: Time will tell. And actually, that's what you feel when you're in the absolute height of the storm. You become very emotive about it when it's your family. And I had to tell my kids not to come to the count. Because it was just going to be so awful. Jess Phillips, Labour Party, 11 ,275.

6:39Jess Phillips: total number of rejected ballot papers is 120 excuse me excuse me because you were going to get heckled regardless of windows or draw like you i knew that that it would be horrible and that they you know that's they're young men they would react badly to that yeah and you didn't want to expose them to that that's horrible yeah yeah yeah that that and that if your job can't be exposed to your children isn't particularly pleasant however like since some of those the the bad faith actors that were around then it's dissipated things are much calmer in my constituency but i think time will tell whether basically a a breakup happened between my constituents and the labour party that has existed for a long long time but it's whether he can whether he can mend that.

7:29Jess Phillips: I don't know yet, but he has a better chance of it than Keir Starmer. Well, we're going to come into that. But before we do, and we go back to July 2024, you had a rough election campaign. You were returned as the MP and you were immediately phoned up by Keir Starmer to ask you to come back into government. You'd resigned as shadow safeguarding minister over Gaza and the government because you could not maintain collective responsibility of that. So you'd resigned in 2023, Labour's elected, and who does he phone? He phones you because clearly the person in the Labour Party to drive the violence against women and girls strategy is going to be you.

8:11You spent your life working with victims of domestic violence, campaigning for them. When Labour won power though, you became not a campaigner, but you became the minister. What did you think on the first day that you walked into the Home Office to do that.

8:29Jess Phillips: I mean it's funny Beth because on one of the first days that I was there in fact I think it was like the first hour that I was there they would come to me because the Home Office gets taken to court quite a lot by a lot of people and they came with this like oh should we appeal this case or not and the case was one that one of my constituents had been part of that I had helped fight a case against the government. So you get this very like real, like, life, like you were this person who took on this department. And now you're the person. You're in the department. And I remember saying to the Home Office staff who are, honestly, what legends.

9:10Jess Phillips: The people I worked amongst, I remember saying very early on in the first few weeks, I said, I want you to know in my constituency office what we call the Home Office. we call it the fucking home office. So I go into this department for which I interact with all the time. I have a constituency of high migration. I deal with huge amounts of domestic abuse. You know, I live in a high crime area. I live in the highest knife crime area in the country. There is rarely a government department. In fact, there is no government department that I have worked against or alongside of more than the home office but I was absolutely determined that I wasn't going to take any of those feelings that I had about where it had failed where it drags its feet where it does things wrong I wasn't going to allow that to stop me in my progress and actually it's a really weird thing when you that like the the civil service is an a remarkable body that can literally go from one government with a folder, put it in a drawer, and then they look to you to be like, this is our priority.

10:19Jess Phillips: Like, these are the things we're going to focus on. And a bit like a dog, when you throw a ball, they will follow it if you throw it and you are certain about where it is going. And because most ministers are not in the position that I was in, is that I'd say in my time at the Home Office, there is one member of staff, there is one civil servant who I think was at the same knowledge base as me and had been working in it for as long as me. You were a genuine expert, which is unusual for a minister, right? Exactly. So there was nothing that they could brief me on that I hadn't done all the referrals on before.

10:57Jess Phillips: I was in charge of the Modern Slavery Service and the national referral mechanism that deals with the modern slavery service. And I was one of the people who was brought into the Home Office to advise them 15 years ago when that was being built. So like most of the people who were trying to brief me on it were like 12 when that happened. But that also meant that they couldn't pull the... I'm not saying that civil... But you know, some of the criticism is that they sit on their hands, they obfuscate. When they would say things to me like, what about this solution? I just said, well, that doesn't work.

11:27Jess Phillips: And actually, this one civil servant, I had worked with him while I was still on the front line. And so me and him would sit there and go, do you remember when we used to do that match fund thing for independent sexual violence advisors? Or do you remember when we tried this particular scheme on sexual exploitation? How did that play out? We could go back for years and years and years of having done it together, both in the field and in the home office. But that was a prime position to be in. And I think Wes Strating once described me as somebody said, oh, you know, how is it in the cabinet? And I was like, I'm not in the cabinet.

12:04Jess Phillips: Wes Strating said, no, she's not in the cabinet. She's just got real main character energy. Should you have been in the cabinet, given that he made her this priority? No, no, absolutely. She's just got main character energy. She's just got main character energy. But I don't think that he should have put me in the cabinet. I think, A, because I was a risk and I was the only person who'd resigned who was invited back. which turned out to be a risk that didn't pay off all that well. But I was a risk. Although I have to say to Keir Starmer, he genuinely apologised to me really, really quite profusely after the election, after what I'd been through.

12:39And he looked really quite taken aback

12:42Jess Phillips: by what people like me and Shibana Mahmood had been put through. Do you think at that point he thought he had misjudged his Gaza policy? Yes, by that point he'd changed it. But also, I genuinely just think he thought I was the best person to do the job. And, you know, the only job I wanted to do was that one. And I wanted to be like a workaround in that. However, what I would say on reflection is without proper power from the centre, me being able to deliver real genuine change in that became quite difficult because I was a junior minister. and I had to rely on the fact that the centre and other secretaries of state would be frightened of me slagging them off about it.

13:25You had Yvette Cooper as your, the Home Secretary, who was completely aligned with you on the policy. Completely aligned with me. And then Shabana Mahmood, who was also aligned on the policy.

13:35Jess Phillips: I mean, they were very different people to serve, actually. So Yvette Cooper, sort of feminist old guard, cares so deeply about violence against women and girls. Can I just say, I've seen her twice in the past week, one on a trip and one on a short interview. And every time I see her now, she says, we have to do more on Sudan. Yeah, yeah. And what is going on with the violence there and the way in which rape has been used as a war crime. And she came up to the back of the plane, I don't think she'll mind me saying this, on the NATO trip. And she said to all of the journalists there, I want you to cover Sudan more extensively.

14:13and it just speaks to what you're saying. It's not performative for Yvette. She is driven.

14:20Jess Phillips: She is totally driven. And the only reason we got the manifesto commitment was because it was me, Yvette, and Sarah Jones who wrote it together. She backed it. She knew that we had to have a target because otherwise people wouldn't do it. And that made the home office really driven by it, which is helpful. Now, when Shibana came in, we grew up in the same Birmingham politics. She's a neighbouring MP. I genuinely have like a sort of Kashmiri spice mix that her mum taught my husband to make that sits in my cupboard. I've been on many sort of battle line with her dad, who was the chair of the Labour Party.

14:53Jess Phillips: So like this is a woman I know. The relationship that I had with Shibana was in a way quite different to that of Eva, where she was like, I am going to be so focused on the issue of asylum, which she has asylum and small boats and small boats their asylum and small boats and immigration which is this massive political thing that is why she was moved into it yeah yeah they were like i'm always going to trust you i'm never going to feel like i need to be part necessarily of these decisions she's you know you are my person on earth and in a way i mean both of the methodologies of both Home Secretaries was to allow me to just sort of like go off and fly and do it.

15:42Jess Phillips: But yeah, with Shibana, it was just sort of like, it was just a total shorthand. She was just like, if Jess thinks it, I think it. And that is a trust that definitely comes from working with women, working with other women. Now, the government's strategy commitment was to halve violence against women and girls within a decade how much closer do you think the country is now to realising that ambition long long way there had to be a cultural shift that had to be done first of people taking responsibility for it so with the department for health trying to get across that think of it like diabetes is what i said and so if you think about it like diabetes what you're currently offering for recovery for people who've been raped or you know especially those who were raped in childhood um and how they can recover and be like assets to the economy and you it's awful that like you know these are just people but you have to when you're in the government you have to win your arguments by using economic arguments and um and productivity and all this sort of stuff when you know just doing the right thing should be enough but like so it's like what we currently do for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence in our health services is we say if you had diabetes we're going to ignore 98 of you and we're going to give two percent of you acute care at the point you're about to die so we're going to give you insulin at the moment just before you die because you're already dying and i was like but when people come forward and they need to recover yeah like if i if i have a broken leg and i need to recover you'll send me for an mri scan and you'll pay for that mri scan whereas if i come in and say i've been raped and i can't leave the house because i've got agoraphobia because i'm frightened of the situations that i'm in you say oh we're going to refer you to this local rape crisis service for counselling that you can get in a year's time and then the nhs goes on somebody else pays for that so that's not our problem and they don't pay for it it was about getting those government departments to understand and I had people sit in front of me and say whether it's about like education in schools to prevent it from happening in the first place saying well that's not our responsibility that's the home office's responsibility we're like yeah yeah schools is the home office's responsibility the idiot that's like me saying oh well crime in schools that's your responsibility I'm not going to send you a policeman so it was about me really like trying to shake up the culture that says domestic abuse makes you poor it makes you sick your children sick and poor it makes the educational attainments of those children bad like why can you not see we just expected women to take this so it was about doing that that has shifted in some government departments definitely and we are on the way to them taking their responsibility and we have moved it from being about patching people up to preventing people becoming victimized and becoming perpetrators so we've had a cultural change about how we half it that had to occur and took quite a long time and quite a lot of me rolling my eyes and moaning at people but we are nowhere near the level of will and commitment it will actually take to half it yeah and frankly finance the violence against women and girls strategy if you were to do everything in it you would probably drop it by about 25 percent but the doing everything in it is the the phase that we are currently in and some government departments are performing considerably better than others i i what i realized being a government minister is you can make change or make friends we used to have these intergovernmental meetings and i would like i'd started to be like i'll give you a gold star i tell you what ellie reeves She always got a gold star.

19:42Jess Phillips: We're street and got some gold stars for the work that they did in health. But then I'd have to properly give bollockings to government departments and say, and I'd have to then go and grass on them to the prime minister. And it's just sort of like, oh, this is so tedious. So was that one of your greatest frustrations, just not being able to drive, not get enough buy-in to drive things through? Yeah, that was always my greatest frustration. And I understand other government departments have other priorities. But it's not my job to be flexible. I have one job and it is to stop women having to be flexible about their safety.

20:18Jess Phillips: And so I'm a zealot, really. And that is problematic in government. I don't underestimate that. I am a zealot. And I understand that. But is that not what's needed to drive it through? Funnily enough, I've got a number of letters from civil servants who either had worked alongside me and then left to have a different job somewhere else or when I left, wrote me letters to just say things like, I've just never known, I've never worked under anybody who was quite so determined. Like, you know, if I'd been the minister for, I don't know, floods that happen all over, I suppose then you just become single bloody minded about floods maybe.

20:59Jess Phillips: But nobody had ever taken the zealotry towards violence against women and girls that I did. So it was like it was a failure of generations. But you launched the strategy and you achieved a lot. But there's a lot of unfinished business. You quit as the minister in May after the local elections because you said you just couldn't support the Keir Starmer administration anymore. Keir Starmer is now gone. I've got to ask you, Jess, would you go back in?

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22:08Terms and conditions apply. You can only become an insider if you're over the age of 18 and live in the UK. Subscription auto-renews at the regular price unless cancelled via My Account. Cancel any time effective at the end of the billing period. OK, that's enough from me. Back to the pod. Hello, it's Elizabeth Day from How to Fail here. My next guest is the actual Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. I have to be careful here, this does make me quite emotional. Of course it does. She said, we all knew kind of what time you might be coming up Downing Street. So we got Roy and we got the telly right in front of him and six of us stood around him and all said, look, Roy, look, look.

22:47Momentarily, they said, we thought he knew. Listen to How to Fail wherever you get your podcasts.

22:57Jess Phillips: I don't think I'm suited to it Beth is the actual answer I don't think look I won't go back in and do more of the same so no is the answer I won't go back and be a junior minister who you know whilst has an awful lot of gumption and kudos in the field I won't go back and just start just knocking heads together again It has to be led. And what I've told Andy Burnham's team and written papers for them on it, I have done this work. What I've told them is that it has to be driven by a higher power. I feel like my brother in the 12-step programme. It's driven by a higher power. It has to be driven absolutely from the centre.

23:40Jess Phillips: Now, I think here's time I tried to make a bit of a fist of that, but like on the day to day. So the only thing that I would go back and do is not to be a minister in a government department that is just ballsy and is everybody knows that they'll roll their eyes at them and shout at them in the meetings. And it's not civil servants I was shouting at ever. It was always the ministers. But is is the idea that it is it is led from the centre. I am happy to do the work. The work is not a problem. And I know all the details. I'm happy to do the work. But it has to be imbued with power. So when you say from the centre, it has to come from the number 10?

24:21Jess Phillips: Number 10, yeah. It has to come from number 10. And in one of the Mandelson ferrores, one of the demands I made. So every time Mandelson was in the news, I used to make extra demands. One of the demands was that we had specific special advisors that were about Vogue that sit within number 10. So it is just about beefing up that thing. Also having VORG advisors who are politicians within different government departments because that worked really well in health and coordinating some of that. The work is not the problem. I just, I hated it. I hated being a government minister. Actually, I hated it.

24:56Jess Phillips: I was deeply unhappy throughout most of it. Why did you hate it so? I'm not suited. Do you think it was because you were a campaigner and then you became the establishment, if you like? I mean, yes, there were points at which over Mandelson, I felt deep shame to be part of that institution. And so that isn't, you know, when you feel shame about something, especially somebody who is a campaigner about people not feeling shame. How did you feel when you learned that Starmer had appointed him? I was apoplectic. Did you just think at that point, I need to leave government? When he appointed him, I genuinely did not know very much about the Epstein thing.

25:34Jess Phillips: I knew about Epstein. I didn't know about his association with it. But when the Epstein stuff started to come out, I just felt so ashamed. And yes, I wanted to resign. And there was a brilliant moment where I'm speaking to Keir Starmer during that weekend. It was just after the reshuffle, wasn't it? Because it all happened at a similar time. The Mandelson stuff and Angela Rayner. so the reshuffle was happening at the same time as um that and i was in a goat farm in uh in a what a goat farm i think people think that when you're negotiating with number 10 you're in like like wood panel dreams my mates had have a baby and i'd gone over to see this baby in high wycombe one of them was in the military so they live on a military base and i'd taken the little boy lovely sabre i've taken him out to uh i can really recommend it i bloody love a goat i'm in this car park gravel car park of this goat sanctuary like negotiating with number 10 and then at a second point in a mcdonald's drive-thru near um stoke mandeville this is lifting the lid this is how this is real life yeah mcdonald's drive-thru near stoke mandeville where i did my second phase of negotiations can i ask you about also about gaza because you resigned over this in 2022 because of the government position on Gaza.

26:56You said at the time, 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. And you said that you saw 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. In recent days, Andy Burnham has now publicly apologised for Labour's initial response, saying the party didn't get it right in the early months after the October 7th attack, and that it was too slow to call for a ceasefire.

27:35Given that you resigned over this issue, that you know it intimately, that it matters deeply to your constituents how significant do you think Andy Burnham's change of position is?

27:46Jess Phillips: No I think people will wait for action but it is very it's very significant to apologise actually I think it is and it's always easier to apologise for something else somebody else did than it is to apologise for something you did. The mistakes of my father. Yeah exactly so but it is very significant that he has said sorry because there was a level of betrayal that my constituents felt and not just my constituents but there was a level of betrayal of we thought Labour were better than this and there was just a really specific LBC interview that Keir Starmer did. A siege is appropriate cutting off power cutting off water.

28:27Jess Phillips: I think that Israel does have that right it is an ongoing situation um obviously everything should be done within international law but i don't want to step away from the sort of core principles that israel has a right to defend herself and hamas bears responsibility and and if i were being generous it was in the wake of you know the absolutely horrendous sort of pogrom that had happened in israel and you want to show solidarity 100 % to, there's just like horrendous incident, not incident, incident is too small a word. So I can see where he went wrong. What he didn't successfully do was take that back quickly enough.

29:14Yeah, I mean, they would say he made a mistake, he misspoke. He misspoke, yeah, but then he didn't apologise for at least six days. No, no, he said that he misspoke or he misunderstood the question. that wasn't what he meant but they just did not grasp this in 24 7 hour news cycles as well there should have just been an immediate apology and correction and that didn't happen and and the damage that that has yeah and i remember at the time telling him to do it i was like he needs an

29:42Jess Phillips: apology i was running the town i was helping run the tamworth by election at the time so what you're saying is it's a good it's a good start but he has to actually back it up i think people will uh to give Andy Burnham the absolute benefit of the doubt. But I think that like everything with Andy Burnham, I think he's going to have to come out very, very quickly. He is going to have to do some quite radical things quite quickly to prove that there is backbone to the talk. The talk of change. The talk of change, yeah. And actually, remind people that change won't necessarily happen, but that he's willing to put in place the things that will change things in the future quite quickly.

30:23Jess Phillips: You obviously bat Wes Street in. Yeah. Wes decided not to run. I remember doing an interview with you shortly after you resigned where you said it's really important that Andy Burnham doesn't look entitled. How do you think he's looking at the moment? Well, it's funny, isn't it? Because I think he's getting away with it in a way that I don't know that other people would. And I don't really know why. Why? I mean, he's obviously got some sort of magic gift. I don't know. But also, look, the team of people that he has around him are people that I'm going to say pretty much... So if you think of Lou Haig, James Pennell, Annalise Midgley, there's something there for everyone, isn't there?

31:09Jess Phillips: Do you know what I mean? I mean, I know in the country this will sound incredibly... Just quickly explain because no one will know who they are. No one will understand. Like, so there is some, like, whatever wing of the Labour Party you are part of, Annalise Midgley is a die-in-the-wall union organiser, negotiator. She is well-liked by all of the Parliamentary Labour Party from the years long before she was a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party. She was the person negotiating with us around different policies and always did it on her class and charm. James Pennell sort of puts to like the West Streeting wing of the Labour Party.

31:46Jess Phillips: James Pennell puts that bit of the Labour Party at ease. I think Darren Jones came out and said like, oh, it's... Thank God James is there. Yeah, yeah. Thank God there's a man from the 90s. He's a former minister with Burnham in the Blair Brown years. And then he left Parliament, went and did a big job with the BBC. Then went and worked in corporate affairs. so he's like yeah yeah so but for me the reason the only is he a grey beard is that what you know like they call those wise men they call them greybeards I don't know he looked a lot older than he looked in all the pictures when I saw him in my corridor the other day well so maybe we could call him a grey beard but for me loves running he and I have spoken about running in the past sorry and then Lou Haig and so Lou Haig is the person I trust fundamentally and so for a big wing of the Labour Party and I'm going to say namely the women of the Labour Party.

32:44Jess Phillips: Lou Haig being sort of part of that government machine makes me feel very comforted by it. She's a proper feminist. She doesn't take fools gladly. She's very, very, very clever. We're going to have to come back for part two of this interview to be out of time. But before we go, I'm going to do quick fire. What did the civil servants call you? like my name they call me jess you mean like did they call me minister no but did you have like a sort of like they kept they bought me a variety of mugs so one said i want what counter-terrorism's got because i used to always moan that counter-terrorism which kills far fewer people they put it on the mug they put it on a mug and then the second mug because they bought me when i broke i want what counter-terrorism not by throwing at anyone in a bullying rage they bought me a mug that said, I didn't quit my job today.

33:34Okay, next quickfire. Does Andy Burnham's North include somewhere like Birmingham?

33:39Jess Phillips: Yes, because Andy Burnham's North is in Manchester and that is an hour from my house and three hours from Newcastle. When I was with Andy Burnham the other day, I said, I think you really come from the North Midlands. Final question, are you going to run as an MP in 2029? I think the jury's out. The answer would have been no, a definite no. and I've written my resignation letter already, but I shall wait and see. It might not be 2029. It might be tomorrow, mightn't it? Well, do you think they were going to have an early election? No, I actually don't think we're going to. I think it might be earlier than 2029, but I don't think it's going to be like 2026 or 2027.

34:18Jess Phillips: Maybe 2028. You feel more optimistic about the Labour government now? Yeah, I do feel more optimistic about the Labour government, but I also, maybe it's hard to tell because now I'm not a minister, I've got DMOB happy. Hard to tell. All right, well, look, we've got to go because I've got to release Jess Phillips. She needs to go back to her office. And if you want to become a member of our exclusive club, it's a pretty good gang to be in. Have a look in the show notes for our electoral dysfunction insider. And we will have loads more Jess in the coming weeks. So, Jess, thanks for joining us. Never go back into government.

34:57We'll do the pod again. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Goodbye. Bye.