Jess Phillips becomes third candidate to enter Labour leadership race
4 min read
Jess Phillips has called on Labour members to elect "a different kind of leader" as she joined the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.
The Birmingham Yardley MP said she Boris Johnson must he challenged with "passion, heart and precision" as she vowed to help re-connect her party with the working class voters it has lost since it last won an election in 2005.
She the third MP to officially enter the race, after Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis.
Others who are expected to throw their hats into the ring over the next week include Sir Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy, Rebecca Long Bailey, Ian Lavery and Dan Jarvis.
Announcing her candidacy, Ms Phillips said: "I wasn’t sure if I was going to stand in this contest but listening to the debate in the days after the election, I thought, we’ve got to elect someone who gets it - someone who understands how serious this defeat was.
"We’re a party named after the working class who has lost huge parts of its working class base. Unless we address that, we are in big trouble."
Attacking Jeremy Corbyn's "woeful response to anti-semitism" among its ranks, she said whoever succeeds him must not be afraid to speak the truth to the electorate.
She added: "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. We need to speak to people's hearts, and people need to believe we really mean it when we do.
"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."
Ms Phillips' campaign - which will have the strapline 'Speak Truth. Win Power' - is expected to rely heavily on the backbencher's 340,000 social media following to get its message across.
Despite never having served on Labour's frontbench, her supporters insist she already has the 21 nominations she needs to make it onto the ballot paper.
An outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn, the backbencher is likely to face fierce opposition from his supporters during the election campaign.
She has been criticised in the past for saying she would "stab him in the front", and in an interview with Channel 4 News, she expressed regret at her "clumsy use of language".
She said: "It is a clear metaphor to say that I would always be upfront with him which I then went on to be. I think that the reality is if that is the most important thing to you and you can’t sit down and talk to me and hear my side of the story, then that’s a shame. I have to move on because we have a job to do. We all have a job to do.
"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."
A poll of Labour members earlier this week on who they would like to see succeed Mr Corbyn put her in third place on 11%, behind Ms Long Bailey and Sir Keir.
Meanwhile, former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has said the "first task" of the new leader is to explain why the party lost the last election.
He also appeared to hint that he believed the next leader should be someone who served in Mr Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, which would rule out Ms Long Bailey and Sir Keir.
He told the BBC: "For whoever wants to lead the Labour Party, their first task is to explain to 500,000 members of the party why Labour lost and why Labour hasn't won for a decade.
"Those members of the Shadow Cabinet that are running for leadership and deputy leadership of the party... have got a particular pressure on them, as they do have to explain whether they think that particular manifesto was the right one or not."
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