Commons Diary: Jess Phillips MP
3 min read
"The fact that I have become immune to the threats on my life is not where I thought I would be when I arrived in Westminster"
It has been a long week in politics. By Thursday I was remarking how we had voted for the second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill “last week” when it had only been two days earlier. Time and space have left the building while I seem to have been here endlessly.
I have forgotten what Birmingham looks like and I suspect a whole range of new office blocks will have been thrown up in the city centre while I am here making no progress at all.
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Tuesday didn’t just bring with it the only vote the prime minister has managed to win in his Brexit battles – for many of us it brought the now all too familiar threats of violence.
The first emails I saw on Tuesday morning were three separate emails, telling me someone was following me and was going to shoot me, or that my office would be targeted with a bomb if I didn’t vote for the Bill. It barely even raised my eyebrows, because this is my new normal.
The fact that I have become immune to the threats on my life is not where I thought I would be when I arrived in Westminster. It is not what I want to feel, it is not where our country should be.
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Being away from Birmingham now for two weeks is more than just an annoyance about not sleeping in my own bed; it means I lose perspective on reality and I think that the flags and loud hailers of Parliament and the vitriol on my email is the reality. When I am home, I know that it isn’t real.
I know that people are rubbing along perfectly well however they voted in the dreaded referendum. I know that Leavers are walking Remainers’ kids to school and cooking tea for people who vote for different political parties to them. Nobody is shrieking and shouting, and flags are not being raised for anything.
The country is not as divided as we are being constantly told; SW1 might be a hellscape of vitriol but as so often it is not representative.
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In the alternate reality that is Parliament this week law can once again be changed through the virtue of numbers pulled out of a bag. I bumped in to the prime minister as I was signing the Private Members’ bill book, and I asked him if he was looking to change a law through the Private Members Ballot as he seems to be struggling to manage it elsewhere.
The MP in front of me at the ballot had picked his number in the “the change the law lottery” as it added up to 11 which he believed was politically a lucky number.
So there you have it: the only laws that will change any time soon in the hallowed halls of Westminster will be based on a selection of randomly picked numbers based on superstitions and hunches. We just need Noel Edmonds to roll up with a red phone to the banker while once again Parliament plays Deal or No Deal. I’m not sure this is worth dying for.
Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and Associate Editor of The House magazine
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