Jess Phillips: 'Kemi Badenoch is not a serious person'

Read time: 6 mins

In brief…

• Jess Phillips says Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is looking for media attention when she criticised Labour plans to teach school children about misogyny, and instead blames migrants for violence against women and girls.
• Phillips tells Lewis Goodall that she wants to include young British men and boys in the conversation about women’s safety, and says it’s time they become part of tackling the issue.
• She also speaks of concerns about teens turning to AI chatbots for information about sex, and is saddened by the rise of OnlyFans use in the UK.

Labour MP Jess Phillips says Tory leader Kemi Badenoch should apologise to rape victims, after criticising Labour plans to teach school children about violence against women and girls.

One in eight women in England has faced domestic abuse, stalking or harassment according to National Statistics figures, and these new lessons are part of Labour’s new strategy to tackle the misogyny epidemic in the UK.

Phillips, Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, unveiled the scheme this week, and it will be backed by £1 billion of funding. It will also introduce sexual offences teams to every police force in England, and £19 million of additional funding for housing domestic violence survivors, among other measures.

Badenoch attacked the focus on young men and boys, has said that young British boys are not committing crimes against women, and has instead blamed migrants.

"We need to get people who have come from cultures that don’t respect women out of our country," Badenoch said.

"Not all cultures are equally valid."

But Jess Phillips is having none of it.

"I think that all she cares about is getting a good media line. So well done. Kemi," says Phillips, speaking with Lewis Goodall on The News Agents.

She says Badenoch, former Minister for Women and Equalities under the last Conservative Government, should apologise to rape victims for her comments.

"I believe she never once spoke on the issue of girls who are being groomed into sex," Phillips says.

She says comments suggesting migrants are the leading perpetrators of violence against women and girls in the UK are "despicable".

"When I speak to young people in our country who are being abused, it doesn't matter the creed, colour, or religion of the person who abused them," the minister says.

"The idea that Kemi Badenoch is saying that there is no problem in British men and boys suggests to me that she hasn't seen the data.

"That's a line that Kemi Badenoch wants to say. She's not a serious person."

Toxic masculinity and 'beautiful masculinity'

Phillips insists the introduction of teaching about misogyny is not intended to vilify teenage boys, and will instead protect them, as those who commit crimes will ruin their own lives, as well as the lives of their victims.

She rejects the age-old excuse of "boys will be boys", and says she thinks more highly of British men than people who rely on this line.

"Men are completely capable and in control of their faculties and their behaviours, but I think it is hard to grow up as a boy," Phillips says.

"I don't think that they've been included in the conversations, whether it was the #metoo, movement, and the outpouring of what has been happening to women and girls – it has felt like an attack."

She also takes issue with the frequent use of the term "toxic masculinity" to discuss negative behaviour of men and boys.

"Why don't we ever talk about 'beautiful masculinity' as well?" Phillips asks, adding that her viewpoint comes as a woman who has faced stalking and harassment herself, having lived experience of the issues facing women and girls everywhere.

"I raised my sons – my men – with a sense of the strength of masculinity," she says.

"So if you talk about toxic masculinity, you should talk about the alternative as well."

"I don't want men and boys to feel vilified by this. I want them to join in – the vast majority of men and boys in our country want to."

How to tackle the online threats to young men and boys

Phillips acknowledges the dangerous impact of influencers such as Andrew Tate on young men and boys, but says there is a much greater danger facing them in modern society.

"Misogyny and hateful attitudes towards women existed before the internet, and I don't want to ever give Andrew Tate too much credence, but when men and boys didn't have other places to go and talk about this stuff, they turned to the internet and found people like him," she says.

"The question teachers are raising is that teenagers are asking AI about these difficult questions about sex.

"It's not that they're getting it from Andrew Tate, they're getting it from a thing that doesn't even exist. It's a concept. It's a string of zeros and ones."

Australia has taken extreme measures to address the impact of the online world, and those who exist within it, banning under-16s from social media.

But Phillips does not believe this is a "silver bullet" which will solve the problem.

"As a teenager, me and most of my friends suffered from these things and the internet didn't exist," she says.

"So I think that we still have to be providing that context within schools and environments."

Are OnlyFans and Warhammer propping up the British economy?

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the number of people using DIY porn site OnlyFans, with global spending reaching $7.2 billion (£5.4bn) in 2025, a 9% increase from the $6.6 (£4.9bn) billion spent in 2024.

Phillips jokes that the UK's two biggest industries in 2025 are OnlyFans and Warhammer, but says there is a serious and dark side to the rise in the DIY porn industry.

"It seems to have become quite a mainstream idea that you do a bit of OnlyFans on the side, and I find that upsetting, the idea that women and women's sexuality is such a high value product," she says, although both men and women use the service to produce homemade adult content.

"That world can only exist because there is demand for it amongst men, but this is not a uniquely British attribute.

"They prop up a market of sexual exploitation."

She fully supports the government's Online Safety Act, despite claims from some, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, that it is a degradation of British people's freedom of expression.

Phillips "fundamentally disagrees" with Farage's criticisms.

"I don't know where it says in which document that 11 year olds should be able to watch violent strangulation porn, otherwise their human rights might be affected," she adds.

"But I'm happy to look at the documents where they exist."

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