MP Phillips: I won’t resign Labour whip
LABOUR MP Jess Phillips has said there is no chance of her resigning as a Labour MP despite opposition to Jeremy Corbyn.
The MP for Birmingham Yardley said: “The Labour Party is my family it is my home.”
In July this year she warned that she would find it “incredibly difficult” to continue as a Labour MP if Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected as party leader.
And asked if she might sit as an independent, she said: “I think I’m going to wait and see what happens.”
Becoming an independent MP would mean resigning the Labour whip in the House of Commons. But speaking after Mr Corbyn’s re-election was confirmed on Saturday, Ms Phillips said she had never intended to suggest she might leave Labour. She said: “The reason I said I would find it difficult was because I feel so unwelcome. There isn’t a sense of unity. “However, what we have to try and do now is, all of us, myself included, is harbour a sense of unity. “I never said I would leave the Labour Party. I said it would be incredibly hard to stay where I am so unwelcome. “So it is the job of everybody to make everybody in the Labour Party feel welcome now. I’m definitely not going anywhere. I am definitely not going to leave the Labour Party. The Labour Party is my family it is my home.
“I shan’t be leaving the Labour Party, but I will expect to see unity from both sides and willingness from both sides – not just words. I don’t want words, I want action.”
She hoped that Mr Corbyn would agree to allow Labour MPs, known as the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), to help select the Shadow Cabinet, his team of senior shadow ministers who represent the party and help devise policy.
Ms Phillips said: “That means making the front bench into a PLP team.
“If that means electing some of them – not all of them, nobody is being really demanding and asking for everything – Jeremy Corbyn has a real opportunity to show unity in agreeing to some of that.”