I’ve told family what to do if I’m killed, says MP
Phillips ‘constantly on guard’ as threats man jailed for 5 years
BIRMINGHAM MP Jess Phillips has revealed the terrifying threats made against her – and how she has issued instructions to her family in the event of her being murdered.
The Birmingham Yardley Labour MP says she has been reduced to tears, is constantly on her guard, her children are affected, and is furious that tormentors can continue a campaign of terror from behind bars.
Mrs Phillips, 40, spoke out after Rakeem Malik was jailed for five years after threatening to chop her up and blow up her car.
The politician shared a note in which Malik, 54, threatened to have her killed in the same way as Jo Cox – the Labour MP murdered by a white supremacist in 2016.
Malik branded Jess a “stupid bitch” and said: “My friends have been watching you and your family. I will kill you in the same way as Jo Cox.
“My friend Thomas Mair killed her for me. You’re next.”
A court was told Malik also warned: “I saw your family the other day. If you think I am not going to kill one of them you are wrong.
“I am going to kill you dead. I am going to chop you up and your family.”
Mrs Phillips said she has begged husband Tom to turn to Jo’s widower Brendan and sister Kim Leadbeater, a fellow MP, if the worst were to happen to her.
She says: “The person I worry most about is my husband. I just think that bit of it would just be impossible for my family to deal with.
“My husband is not a public man, there would be no emotional speeches in Trafalgar Square from him.
“I have said to him, ‘If something bad happens to me, these are the people you should speak to – Brendan and Kim, first and foremost. Just go to them. They will know what to do’.”
Mrs Phillips, shadow minister for safeguarding and domestic violence, says she receives countless death and rape threats, many targeting her for speaking out about violence against women and girls.
She is haunted by what happened to Jo Cox and, with continuing threats to her own life, fears she is suffering from PTSD.
Her two children have been deeply affected – one insisting on standing with his back to the wall to be aware of possible attack.
Malik was serving life for attempted murder when he first targeted Mrs Phillips in 2019.
He also sent threats to fellow Labour MP Rosie Cooper and former
Prime Minister Theresa May and, in the summer of 2020, was given five years in jail.
In November last year, Mrs Phillips discovered he had sent her another vile letter from his cell, despite assurances he had been banned from doing so.
But that paled in comparison to the horror she felt when police said he could pay someone to harm her.
She says: “The police let on to me that he had a relatively large amount of money.
“One of the things they were worried about was his ability to arrange things on the outside. Obviously, that frightened me. I was just so cross and upset that this had been able to happen again. The fact that you can, from inside our prisons, continue to victimise a variety of women is just unfathomable to me.”
Mrs Phillips was not at Birmingham Crown Court when Malik was sentenced last week.
She reasoned it wasn’t worth the mental toll it would take on her. She had watched Malik’s 2020 case on Zoom – only to have a panic attack hours later while in Sainsbury’s with son Danny, 13.
And when Tony Eckersley, 52, was jailed for 28 months in April this year for sending over 300 email threats, she cried for hours after seeing the news on her phone while in a chip shop.
She says: “I got home and just wept in my bedroom, on my own.
“It feels lonely because the people in my life are not political. I just couldn’t get my family to understand how that had made me feel. They feel deep sympathy for me but they don’t understand the fundamentals of being hated for who you are.”
As well as the deluge of threats, she is still grappling with her grief for Jo Cox. Just days before the Brexit referendum in June 2016, Mair killed the 41-year-old mum of two as she made her way to a surgery in Birstall, West Yorks. Mair was handed a whole life tariff.
She is also still reeling from the 2017 Westminster terror attack, as children from her constituency toured the Commons.
She said: “I think I could have some form of PTSD, without question.”
I think I could have some form of PTSD, without question
Jess Phillips MP