Firebrand MP gets to work on her manifesto

AS LABOUR descends into an unprecedented state of dull chaos, where are the firebrands? Well, one to watch is mouthy MP Jess Phillips, who is spending the summer writing a personal manifesto. And publishers are dead keen to print it.

There has been a “heated six-way auction” for the book entitled Everywoman: One Woman’s Truth About Speaking the Truth, according to The Bookseller. It re s ul t e d i n a deal wit h publi sh e r Hutchinson, responsible for releasing the diaries of Tony Benn and Alastair Campbell — the book is due out in the spring. Hutchinson says Phillips is the perfect figurehead for a new way of thinking: “She knows exactly what it’s like to be on the front line in the fight for equality,” a rep says, “and what it really means to be a woman trying to change things in a man’s world.”

Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, has already made an impression: she said she told Diane Abbott to “f **k off ” and that she would be prepared to knife Jeremy Corbyn “in the front”.

“I only write when I have something to say,” she told us today. When she first received an email from her agent Laura Macdougall she thought she was being asked to write a novel. “For weeks my friends were suggesting ideas for books on sexy vampires”. But now the possibilities of the impact she can make have dawned on her. “I’m confident I’ll get it done. I’m good with deadlines, I wrote 7,000 words yesterday. I just worry about whether anyone will read it.”

Phillips will be writing mainly in the evenings as she doesn’t want the book to interrupt her work but her constituents don’t need to worry about losing their MP to the literati. “I’m going to take it as I go,” she told us. “I’m not Jackie Collins.”