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Louise Thomas
Editor
Labour frontbenchers are “going to mess up” and “disappoint” voters, a new Labour minister has said.
But Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said that overall, her party would have a “more honest approach” than the Conservatives.
Of the last Tory government, she said: “It feels like politicians have been spitting in our face and telling us it is raining, which is a funnier way of saying ‘gaslighting you.’”
The Birmingham Yardley MP added: “They will be like, ‘we’re spending more on the NHS than ever before’ and then you spent 19 hours and leave the accident and emergency unit not having any treatment.”
She made the comments at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where she said her latest book, Let’s Be Honest, had been written after she went to an A&E in Birmingham and received “genuinely worse than healthcare I have watched being provided in war zones”.
Ms Phillips said: “I just went f***ing apeshit and started writing.”
She warned the audience, that when it comes to Keir Starmer’s new ministerial team: “I think some of them are going to mess up over the next years, and they are going to disappoint you, that is the truth.”
But she added that “overall, it is going to be a more honest approach” from the government.
She also said she was “hopeful” the government would make progress in tackling male violence against women.
And she told of how she was surprised to be made a minister in the wake of Labour’s landslide election victory last month.
Ms Phillips resigned from Sir Keir’s front bench late last year to rebel and back a Commons motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
She said she was a “bit surprised” to be invited to be part of the government, during a phone call with Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.
“I hadn’t expected to be asked back because you have to stay out in the cold a bit when you are a rebel,” she said.
However, she said that the fact that “Keir Starmer gave me, the naughty girl, the job back” showed Labour’s determination to tackle violence against women.
She stated: “Even just in the Home Office, let alone I feel it across government, there is this turn, this switch towards this thing that everybody has been talking about being the priority.
“Culture is actually head of politics on violence against women and girls, the nation has tired of it and wants it to be a public priority, certainly but not just exclusively the women in our country.
“To then now watch the government switch its focus and direct it on to it, I already feel really, really positive.”
