https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/24/jess-phillips-lindsay-hoyle-jo-cox-murder-gaza-vote/
Interviewed in the Telegraph, including on VAWG, and trans issues. Archived in the usual places.
'Would she still like to be prime minister? “I’d still give it a crack, sure!” she says, firmly. “I used to want to be the home secretary. But I’ve learnt I don’t have that special skill of plotting, organising for your own progression that you need to get on. Women are less interested in that than men. My only ambition in politics is to halve the levels of violence experienced by women and girls in a decade. Despite two women dying every week there is still <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/X8IhI/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/09/jess-philips-womens-lives-risk-failure-reform-child-payouts/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">no strategy or target around femicide. We live in a patriarchy still. It is 2024 but all our institutions are based on a 1950s, or 1850s or even 1750s ideal that doesn’t work for women.”
Prior to becoming an MP she worked for Women’s Aid and ran rape crisis refuges. I believe her when she says it is her life’s purpose. Phillips is a rare bird in today’s politics – a confident, clever working-class woman.
So where is she on trans issues, how has her work on protecting women been affected by this debate? “The actual work hasn’t been affected at all. The political space has undoubtedly been affected, not all negatively.” Can she still speak about women? “Of course! I feel totally comfortable speaking out about women – sometimes when I talk about women that means different things. I am capable of holding two ideas in my head at once… I believe in single sex spaces for biological women, prisons, refuges etc. – 100 per cent. I’ve got the T-shirt on that. But also, if someone asks me to refer to them as a woman, I personally will do that. I’ll call you whatever you ask me to. <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/X8IhI/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/09/jess-phillips-no-trans-person-met-has-said-cant-say-woman/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I am happy to refer to transwomen as women. But also the idea that I am meant to parrot ‘transwomen are women’ as a slogan is f-g meaningless.” Classic Phillips. Having her cake and eating it.
“When I worked in women’s refuges, we always asked questions on the referral forms about people’s sex at birth, whether people had transitioned, basically. The language we used would probably get you sent to the gallows now.” She smiles and goes into a long explanation about how “there are all sorts of reasons why women who are referred might not be allowed in a refuge, not just trans. For instance, if a woman had a 14-year-old son with her, she wouldn’t be allowed in the main women’s refuge centre, she would be cared for in dispersed houses within the community with supervision so she could stay with her son. Or women with child protection issues or those with substance abuse issues.
This is Parliament’s responsibility, it’s up to the legislature to make it clear. She stresses that it is disabled women, older women and those with complex needs who have “the hardest time accessing the right kind of safe spaces… We need to have women’s biological spaces, but also when I was on Birmingham City Council, I commissioned domestic refuges for LGBTQ+ folk, particularly men beaten up by their partners. It should not be beyond the wit of man to protect women’s biological sex spaces and provide different spaces for trans people.”'