Labour MP who tore into Corbyn is condemned as a ‘traitor’ by hard-Left trolls
A LABOUR MP suffered a torrent of abuse from hardLeft trolls yesterday after saying she would make a better Prime Minister than Jeremy Corbyn.
Jess Phillips was dubbed a ‘traitor’ by online critics, who also called for her deselection.
The 37-year-old MP for Birmingham Yardley has been an outspoken critic of the party leader.
But she refused to buckle in the wake of online abuse following an interview in which she savaged the politician’s leadership.
In a wide-ranging profile article, she likened both Mr Corbyn and Theresa May to characters from 70s sitcom The Good Life.
She: ‘I think I’d be a good Prime Minister. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are of a bygone era. It’s like The Good Life – she’s Margot, he’s Tom.
‘There’s an old-fashionedness about them. Their politics are so 70s – it’s hate migrants, love miners. They’re both in this terrible situation where they’re very traditional, very stubborn, bloody difficult people and they can’t assimilate with groups of people who aren’t like them – or admit when they’ve made mistakes.’
Posing for a photoshoot in The Times in bright red lipstick and a metallic jacket, she said of the Labour Party: ‘It’s nothing more than a logo if it doesn’t stand for something that I actually care about – it’s just a f****** rose.’
And Mrs Phillips said it was no coincidence that many of the Left-wing advisers around Mr Corbyn went to private schools – and his hard- Left backers Momentum were strongest in middle class parts of Brighton, Bristol, Canterbury and London.
The mother- of-two said: ‘It’s “Up the workers”, but they’re not exactly dockers.
‘They don’t understand what real people’s lives are like. They have dinner parties and hang out with other people who don’t have to worry about which school their children go to, because if they can’t get into a good school they’ll pay for it.
‘They’ve never had to scrabble down the side of the sofa to find money to put petrol in the car because you can’t get to work.’
Corbyn supporters boast that they could never be friends with a Tory. But Mrs Phillips said: ‘I know Jacob Rees-Mogg better than Jeremy Corbyn. I don’t want to just talk to the people who agree with me. That would be really boring.’
She added that she did not want to be crammed into a particular group, adding: ‘I’m always being asked to put myself into parameters designed by somebody else – the Blairite/Corbynite thing – but I’m not going to f****** define myself by some f****** dude from the Labour Party. Sod that. I’m Jess.’
Corbyn supporters later laid into her on Twitter. Labour-backing economist Grace Blakeley said: ‘Sad to see Phillips refer to her party as “just a f****** rose”.
‘The Labour Party is the political representative of the labour movement, not some astroturf campaign that came out of a focus group.’ A social media user called Red ‘til I’m Dead said: ‘The arrogance of Jess Phillips calling the Labour movement “just a f****** red rose”.’ Another added: ‘Horrible woman.’ One tweet read simply: ‘Traitor. #deselection.’
The MP also came under fire for wearing designer clothes – including £475 Jimmy Choo shoes – in the photoshoot while talking about her working class roots. Mr Corbyn appeared on the front of the men’s magazine GQ in 2017 wearing a £200 M&S suit.
Khaled Elawadi tweeted: ‘You’ve tried more ways to reinvent yourself than Madonna and that photoshoot was embarrassing to see mutton dressed up as lamb.’
Twitter trolls turned their fire on Conservative MP Nick Boles on Saturday when he posted: ‘There is something about @ jessphillips that I find irresistible. I would walk over hot coals for her. And yes she would be a great Prime Minister.’
Some critics described Mr Boles, who is gay, as ‘creepy’ .
Others suggested the pair might have a future in the newly formed Independent Group (TIG).
In the interview, Mrs Phillips also discussed the abuse she had suffered, much of it from the hard-Left. The MP said she had been sent ‘a whole file of people talking about stabbing me’.
When a neo-Nazi plot to kill Labour MP Rosie Cooper was foiled, a message from a party member suggested ‘ the one we want them to murder is Jess Phillips’. She also said she had received 600 rape threats on Twitter in a night.
‘The politics is so 1970s’