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.
Bridget bucked the trend, as deputy leader she’ll change it for good.
People like me and Bridget Phillipson aren’t supposed to rise to the top of politics. Working class women aren’t supposed to sit at the cabinet table. She bucked the trend. As Education Secretary she is fighting to change the trend, as deputy leader she would have a mandate to push the government to go further and faster in delivering better opportunities for working class people across the UK.
Our party faces a significant crossroads – we can ensure a mandate for a progressive member of the cabinet to push for the change Labour members want to see, or we can risk a return to division and disunity.
We know how the latter ends.
Our party is the greatest force for social justice the UK has ever known.
We need a united Labour party to beat the poisonous politics of Farage and expose the parties who offer false hope but can’t deliver change.
I’ve worked closely with Bridget as Scottish Labour’s Education spokesperson. She’s a colleague and a friend and my heart swelled with pride when I saw her walking done Downing Street last July to be appointed education secretary.
In that role she is doing what Labour cabinet ministers are supposed to do – push against vested interest to deliver progressive change to benefit working class young people with more security and opportunity.
From free breakfast clubs, Best Start Family Hubs, school-based nurseries, extending Free School Meals, and ending private schools’ tax breaks to deliver more finding for state education.
She did that in the face of sustained and often vicious attacks from the right.
They hate it. They hate a working-class woman unashamedly delivering socialist policies in government.
As Joint Chair of the Child Poverty Task Force she has been clear that tackling child poverty will be her top priority as Deputy Leader, everything is on the table, including removing the two-child limit.
Child poverty is the reason so many of us joined the Labour party in the first place. Bridget has done more than any other cabinet minister to lift children out of poverty since last July.
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