‘A mandate to do more’: Unity, pride and beating Reform – the LabourList deputy leadership interview with Bridget Phillipson

Throughout the race to be Labour’s Deputy Leader, LabourList will be publishing a range of pieces from supporters of both candidates as well as offering a platform to both Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell to share their pitch to Labour members.

“I think I’m the right person to fight for our party, to fight for our country, and to fight for the causes that brought me into the Labour Party,”

How do you ask someone how they’ll do a job as ill-defined as deputy leader of the Labour Party? That was the top of my mind as I sat down to interview deputy leadership candidate and education secretary Bridget Phillipson. So, as we met in a venue just across the road from the Department of Education, which she has been running since Labour came to power, I asked her what her approach would be.

“I’d see it as my job as deputy to unite the party, to make us proud, to make members proud of the brilliant things that we are doing in government.”

Instilling pride

This sense of instilling pride in Labour’s achievements is central to Phillipson’s pitch. In a race where both candidates are seeking to define themselves against an opponent with whom they have much in common politically, it might be this element of her argument that Phillipson ends up making most strongly. She is the candidate who remains part of the government, delivering in a popular brief where Labour has some real achievements to shout about. That good news story is one she is keen to tell.

“I’m really proud of the things that I’ve delivered on in government over the last year. Also, I think those things make members really feel proud. And wouldn’t be happening were it not for a Labour government, whether that’s expanding free school meals, the big expansion of childcare and building on that amazing Labour legacy of Sure Start.”

A mandate to do more

The glaring difference between Phillipson and her opponent, Lucy Powell, is that Phillipson is still in government, while Powell was dropped at the reshuffle. This has given the latter the space to position herself as an outsider, willing to tell truth to power. Phillipson argues that such truths are often worth telling in less public ways – something as a cabinet minister she has a better ability to do. “Sometimes it’s just more effective if you have that fight, you have that row, and you make the case behind closed doors.” But she also argues that having that voice for members represented at the cabinet table for her to “be that campaigning voice around the Cabinet table. And I do think it matters having that seat at the table and having that voice, because I would use that as a mandate to do more.”

READ MORE: Labour’s deputy leadership election prompts questions for everyone

Phillipson has been painted – rightly or wrongly – as the leadership’s favoured candidate. This may seem somewhat ironic given that she has been subject to quite a lot of briefing against her, or as she puts it: “I’ve had a fair bit of nonsense along the way myself, and lots of things written and said about the approach that I’m taking and have taken” during her time in the cabinet. But, she argues, this demonstrates precisely how she has shown that independence of spirit. “I think that shows I’m a pretty independent, minded and forceful person, and that’s what members should expect from me if they vote for me as their deputy.

‘We’re not going to beat Reform by aping Reform’

When the party is in power, Labour members are often torn between a desire to increase their internal voice to push the party to go further and faster on the issues they care about and their yearning for a better, fairer, more positive hearing in the country. This contest may well boil down to which of these two women can find the best mixture of these instincts – and which party members decide to prioritise.

Phillipson’s pitch is that Labour needs a visible campaigner taking the fight “in fullness” to our opponents. “I’d be out there with members on the doors making that change happen.  So yes, being proud of what we’ve achieved, but we’re not going to beat Reform by aping Reform. I think we’ve got to make sure that everything we do is consistent with our values –  Labour values – around solidarity, around fairness and around a sense of equality too.”

When talking about those who act in opposition to those values – be that Nigel Farage and Reform or “the small vocal minority, on social media who are seeking to divide our country” she passionately says “I think is fundamentally anti-British in terms of our sense of community and identity, and I think we as a party need to be really proud of who we are as a nation. Claim that flag. It’s our flag. This is our identity as much as it is anybody else’s.”

A campaigning deputy

When the party is in power, Labour members are often torn between a desire to increase their internal voice to push the party to go further and faster on the issues they care about and their yearning for a better, fairer, more positive hearing in the country. This contest may well boil down to which of these two women can find the best mixture of these instincts – and which party members decide to prioritise. Phillipson is clear that she is seeking to be a “campaigning deputy” – and that the majority of that campaigning spirit would be directed in an outward-facing manner – cheerleading for the party and the difference it has and will make for people like her.

Phillipson grew up in a Labour family. She was raised in tough circumstances by a single mother who was also a Labour activist. As she said, her mum “could only go to meetings if I went along with her. So I spent quite a lot of my young years, playing under the tables in the Miners Hall.” (This is something I can relate to – though in my part of East London it was the Labour Club rather than a Miner’s Hall where I spent my young years in many a creche).

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When asked why she herself joined the Labour Party (she did so at 15), it is the community she was raised in – and now represents in Parliament – that she returns to.

“I had a family that was rich in love and was really supportive and but I saw lots of the other children that I grew up with having a far harder time of it, and I felt, felt a fundamental sense that that was that was wrong, because they were talented, brilliant people, and my community was one where there was a closeness in many ways. We looked out for one another. And it made me really angry that I felt we were being left behind by the Conservatives, and that we weren’t being given every opportunity, every chance in life. And I wanted to be a part of turning that around.”

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Phillipson is at her most animated when talking about education, life chances and literacy. So I asked her what she was currently reading, to which the answer was Atonement by Iain McEwan (she has said she always has a book in her handbag – and true to her word, showed us the proof before leaving). This is a novel about class and the devastating effects of snobbery. But it is also about the power of narrative and storytelling, a skill that will be vital for whoever wins this contest to fulfil. But which narrative they lean into might be one of the areas of distinction between the two.

She also takes pains to be clear that while she is happy to tell her own story “in order to demonstrate why politics matters to me. But it isn’t about me, and it’s never been about me… It’s about our party, our movement, and what we achieve together.”

Whether or not Bridget wins in this contest, it is clear that her drive and passion for transforming life chances will continue to be put to the service of the Labour Party. When I asked her about her last hockey game, she told me twice that they won. And that she “got an assist” – it is this sense of pulling for the team that she is embodying in this contest and offering to the Labour Party.

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