Jess Phillips announces she is entering Labour leadership contest after ‘waking up with fire in my belly’
HARDCORE Remainer Jess Phillips announced she is running to be Labour leader with a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s policies.
She confirmed her leadership bid after waking up with “fire in her belly”.
The outspoken MP savaged the Labour leader’s “woeful response” to the anti-Semitism crisis and refusal to pick a side on Brexit.
She said the party must elect a “different kind of leader” to avoid more crushing defeats at the ballot box.
The outspoken Labour backbencher also warned the party is in “big trouble” if it fails to win back support of working class voters.
Launching her leadership bid with a video, Ms Phillips took aim at Mr Corbyn’s Brexit dithering.
2020 starts with fire in my belly and I promise that won't change.
Jess Phillips
She said: “We have got to be brave and bold and bring people with us, not try and look all ways.
“Trying to please everyone usually means we have pleased no one. Now is not the time to be meek.
“Boris Johnson needs to be challenged, with passion, heart and precision. We can beat him.”
She added: “Too often, like in the woeful response to anti-semitism, the Labour Party has been afraid to speak the truth.”
In addition she vowed to be “bold” in winning back the seats in the Red Wall which crumbled to the Tories.
The MP for Birmingham Yardley also took a swipe at her rivals for the Labour crown, accusing them of not getting why the party got so badly hammered.
She admitted the party has lost the "trust" of ordinary Brits after the election bloodbath saw Labour suffer their worst election defeat since 1935.
A slew of once rock-solid Labour seats turning blue for the first time in generations.
She said: “Now is not the time to play it safe. What I’ve heard so far in this debate is totally inadequate to the scale of the problem.
“Voters have changed. The electoral map has been transformed. Communication in a social media age is different.
“We need to recognise that politics has changed in a fundamental way by electing a different kind of leader. More of the same will lead to more of the same result.”
LEADER RACE
Ms Phillips also admitted she had used “clumsy” language by once saying she would knife Mr Corbyn “in the front” if she thought he was hurting the party.
The MP said she was just trying to stress that she is “upfront” when she made the controversial comment in 2015.
She told Channel 4 News: “One of the reasons that people in the country actually like people like me is because I talk a little bit like them. And that means I will make mistakes.
“And that means I will admit when I make mistakes as well.
“So yes, if I could turn back time, I would say I won’t speak behind Jeremy Corbyn’s back, I will always tell him to his face”.
The outspoken frontbencher joins shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and shadow treasury minister Clive Lewis as those to have formally declared their bids.
Lisa Nandy also last night officially declared she is entering the race to be leader.
The MP for Wigan has previously spoken of the urgent need for Labour to reconnect with their traditional heartlands after their election catastrophe.
Speaking last month when she was mulling over standing, she said: “The reason that I’m thinking about is because we’ve just had the most shattering defeat where you really felt in towns like mine that the earth was quaking and we’ve watched the entire Labour base just crumble beneath our feet.”
Others are also expected to announce their intentions soon, with shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and close Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey considering challenges.
Ms Phillips, who supported victims of domestic abuse for Women's Aid before entering Parliament in 2015, would appear to be a relatively popular choice with the Labour members who will help select the leader.
She came third in a YouGov survey of the membership behind both Sir Keir and shadow business secretary Ms Long-Bailey.
Sir Keir would beat Ms Long-Bailey, who is the favoured candidate of key figures in the current leadership, in a run-off 61% to 39%, according to the early survey.
But the other candidates will be hoping to boost their profiles with the race not expected to formally get under way until Tuesday and a new leader not expected until the end of March.
Labour's disastrous election performance that helped Boris Johnson's Tories win an 80-strong majority has been the subject of an intense post-mortem examination.
The party's Brexit position, Mr Corbyn's unpopularity and his ambitious left-wing programme have all been the subject of scrutiny.
The Sun Says
WHAT is this spell Labour’s Jess Phillips casts over Blairites and media pundits? We don’t get it.
We do not doubt her hard work, nor that her heart is in the right place.
Many naively believe her Brummie accent makes her the true voice of the working-class — this middle-class, grammar-schooled daughter of an NHS executive and a teacher.
But that’s not our real beef. It’s the toe-curling, overwrought Commons monologues designed for social media.
And the needlessly vitriolic and hysterical Twitter rants. Consider this gem: “The greatest lie ever told is that Boris is likeable, with cut-through outside London.” That aged well, as they say.
Phillips may yet be Labour’s best hope as leader, God help them.
But to be seen as a serious politician, she should start acting like one.
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