Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has become the latest senior Labour figure to criticise the way Sir Keir Starmer runs 10 Downing Street. Her comments are particularly surprising because she has been seen as Sir Keir’s pick to become the new Labour Deputy leader. Ms Phillipson is in a contest with Lucy Powell, the former Leader of the Commons who was sacked by Sir Keir in a recent reshuffle.
But the Education Secretary said that she wasn’t close to Sir Keir at all – and had in fact been the victim of sexist briefings. In an interview with BBC Radio 5, she was asked by journalist Matt Chorley: “Do you feel like you’ve been on the receiving end of sexist briefings?” Ms Phillipson replied: “Yeah completely, but you know that’s life.”
Ms Phillipson continued: “I’ve been underestimated most of my life, I’ll just continue getting on and doing what I’m doing, not worrying too much about some of the nonsense that gets written in the papers, but I do slightly have to laugh because there’s this idea swirling around somehow that I’m number 10’s preferred candidate for all of this.
“I’m not quite sure that’s what you and many colleagues in the media have been saying in recent months with all of this negativity and nonsense that I’ve faced. So there’s a certain irony I would say in some of the way that this is being approached.”
Matt Chorley talked about stories that had appeared in some newspapers over the past year that the Prime Minister planned to sack Ms Phillipson. He asked: “Basically you mean that the No 10 that you’re supposedly the candidate of is the No 10 that has spent months briefing that you were not up to the job and they were going to sack you?”
The Labour politician replied: “Well that’s what lots of people have been writing for months. And so others can come to their own conclusions.”
Matt Chorley asked: “Is there something wrong with the culture of the team around Keir Starmer? Sue Gray had also raised similar issues, the Boys Club, the lads club, the sexist briefings. Is it too male, too bloke-ish in Number 10?”
Mrs Phillipson agreed there was a problem, saying: “We had lots of new colleagues who were elected last year, lots of brilliant people who haven’t felt that they’ve been part of the team in the way that they should. And that’s true from the conversations I’ve had, not just with colleagues in Parliament, but actually across our movement.
“We’ve got to get better at working together as a team in Parliament but also uniting our party and our movement, and that’s what I would bring in terms of my ability to unite the party.”
