UK Labour MP slams abuse from pro-Palestinian activists after ‘worst election ever’
Jess Phillips says she and party activists suffered severe harassment during their campaign over Labour’s position on the Israel-Hamas war: ‘The humiliation was by men, to women’
Labour MP Jess Phillips said in her victory speech on Thursday that the campaign to retain her Birmingham Yardley seat was the “worst election I have ever stood in” due to abuse she and her activists suffered at the hands of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Speaking at the vote count after narrowly beating her opponent Jody McIntyre by just 693 votes, Phillips said that “a much older man” was filmed screaming “genocide” at a woman delivering leaflets for her, and that people campaigning for her had their tires slashed by pro-Palestinian activists.
As Phillips tried to deliver her victory speech, protesters heckled and booed at her, chanted McIntyre’s name, and shouted “Free, free Palestine” and “Shame on you.”
“I see we’re going to continue with the class that we had during the campaign… I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence,” Phillips said, asking for the hecklers to be thrown out.
“It’s been pretty grueling here, I’m afraid to say some of my opponents did not reflect at all the manner in which some of my constituents behaved, which was with decorum and class,” she said, adding that she had not brought her children to the speech because they did not deserve the abuse she knew she would be subjected to while delivering her speech.
Phillips later thanked the Midlands Police for responding to the “aggression that we have suffered” during the campaign.
"This election has been the worst election I have ever stood in."
Jess Phillips is met with boos and jeers from the audience as she narrowly wins her Labour seat in Birmingham Yardley.
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Speaking on Sky News’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Phillips described the weeks of campaigning as “the most aggressive and most intimidatory” for her and the people in her constituency.
Addressing the incident where the woman was screamed at, Phillips said the incident had been filmed to “incite more intimidation.”
She said that despite being disappointed with Labour’s actions in some cases, her constituents were “thoughtful, kind and generous” during the campaign.
In the abuse she and her constituents were subjected to, however, “the humiliation was by men, to women. And they wish to drive content… that’s what our politics has become – humiliation. Content-driven grift,” she said.
She added that believed that candidates standing on the pro-Gaza platform were “deplorable” and that they “have done absolutely nothing to help a single person in Gaza” other than bullying and picking on “mainly women.”
She added that politicians who promised to affect the war in Gaza were merely “posturing” because “we don’t have any control over what happens [and] what [Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu does.”
Phillips resigned from the Labour frontbench in November to vote for a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Labour, which has long counted on the backing of Muslim and other minority groups, saw its vote fall on average by 10 points in seats where more than 10 percent of the population identify as Muslim.
Newly appointed British Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood also said she and her family suffered harassment and that some people had tried to “deny her Muslim faith” because she ran with Labour.
“A lot will be written about this campaign, and it should be. This was a campaign that was sullied by harassment and intimidation,” Mahmood said during her victory speech.
Phillips congratulated Mahmood on X on Saturday, saying that she “couldn’t have got through this election without this woman and her lovely family.”
Labour has come under fire for its stance on Israel since the war in Gaza began on October 7 with Hamas’s October 7 attack in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
The party’s leader and the UK’s new prime minister Keir Starmer has called for a lasting ceasefire, but also said that Israel has the right to defend itself.
Labour says it is committed to recognizing a Palestinian state “as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution,” but has not set out a timeline for doing so.
Other commitments include pushing for a ceasefire in the war, the release of all hostages held by the terror group and an increase in the amount of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza.
Labour suffered significant election setbacks in areas with large Muslim populations amid discontent over its position on the war in Gaza, despite a landslide victory in the parliamentary vote.
Jonathan Ashworth, who had been expected to serve in Starmer’s government, lost his seat to independent Shockat Adam, one of at least four pro-Gaza candidates to win. Several other Labour candidates came close to losing.
Pro-Gaza independents also won in Blackburn, and Dewsbury and Batley, beating Labour into second in both. Labour also failed to win in Islington North, where its former leader, veteran left-winger and ardent pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activist Jeremy Corbyn, under whom antisemitism soared inside Labour and who was suspended by the party over the issue, won as an independent.
Agencies contributed to this report.
