Jess Phillips: ‘Keir Starmer’s government made me feel grateful for crumbs’
Jess Phillips stepped down from Keir Starmer’s government after the disastrous local elections, not because of the loss of 1,500 Labour councillors, but because the PM’s promises rang hollow to the lifelong campaigner for women and girls.
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In brief…
- Jess Phillips tells Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall why Keir Starmer’s promise to end “incremental changes” from the Labour government prompted her to resign from cabinet, after feeling her efforts to protect children from pedophiles online were ignored.
- Phillips claims legislation was a possibility, but was blocked by 10 Downing Street.
- She denies her resignation was part of a coordinated push to remove Starmer from power, and hopes her choice helps bring the change she wants to see.
What’s the story?
After a career in politics focused on the safeguarding of women and girls, it was Keir Starmer's response to Labour’s losses in the 2026 local elections that led Jess Phillips to quit her cabinet job.
After losing almost 1,500 seats in May this year, Starmer gave a speech promising his government was done with “incremental change” and would work harder to improve the lives of people across the UK.
“It just didn't ring true to me,” Phillips tells The News Agents.
“I had a moment of realisation where I had been made to feel grateful for crumbs.”
“The Prime Minister clearly cares about violence against women and girls, and child abuse, it would be crass to say anything else. But caring about something and then really driving it are two different things.”
She tells Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall of British girls as young as 10 performing sex acts for men online, some for cash, others for online currency in video games such as Roblox.
Phillips says she can’t accept “piecemeal change” when she has learned from undercover child abuse police officers that global pedophile networks specifically target UK girls because of their school uniforms.
‘The amount of compromise you do as a minister is huge’
She says it took over six months for an agreement from Starmer to do something about this, and the government announced it would work with tech companies to crack down on this sort of activity online.
It was nowhere near close to what Phillips wanted to see happen.
“When you're a government minister, the amount of compromise you have to make all the time is huge,” she says.
“It was meant to be announced in March on International Women's Day. That has been pushed back and pushed back.”
She says she was prevented from saying the government would legislate to protect children from predators online, and that prevention came directly from 10 Downing Street (but adds it was unlikely Keir Starmer was personally involved in those conversations or decisions).
The technology to do this, she adds, already exists, and could be implemented to protect UK children online.
Why she felt she had to quit
In her resignation letter, Philips referred to Starmer as a "good man fundamentally", but admits that is not enough to lead the country.
Along with criticism of a lack of urgency to protect children from abuse online, she criticised Starmer for failing to grasp the "rare opportunity" of Labour government to make positive change for people in the UK.
Phillips says that she’s threatened to quit so many times, she needed to follow through this time to show it was genuine.
“In resigning, I hope that saying these things out loud is the way to push these things forward, and that's all that really matters to me,” she adds.
You just want to hear that someone gets it, and what you hear is a promise of not having incremental change when your experience has been exactly that.
She denied her resignation was any part of a coordinated push to remove Starmer as leader, and simply because she did not believe the changes she wanted to see would ever happen.
“I don't think that Keir Starmer is incapable of doing good things,” Phillips says.
“I think he is a good man, but what his government has so far represented to me is one without the drive to really go out and say who it is, be willing to upset some people and then stick with it in making arguments and really drive things through.”