Off Air... with Jane and Fi - From politics to podcast - with Jess Phillips

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

It's the end of the first week of the podcast and already Jane and Fi have a bonus edition with Labour politician Jess Phillips; Shadow Minster for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding.They spoke together at Podcast Day 24 for a panel discussion about how she manages to juggle being a working politician with hosting her hugely successful podcast Yours Sincerely - where she gives her guests a chance to celebrate three people that mean the world to them.Jess talks about the cost of living crisis, the limits of the sisterhood at Westminster, and how her constituents feel about having a celebrity MP.Podcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A bonus edition of Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fee Glover. We thought, what better way to celebrate the end of our first week than by bringing you this interview with the Labour MP, Jess Phillips. Yeah, we spoke to Jess live from the podcast Day 24 conference, which we all attended together, and we talked about how she's managed to traverse the world of politics, her work, and then turning her attention to that of her brilliant podcast which is called yours sincerely a fair warning on this dear listeners uh she may be a red politician but her language does get a little bit blue

right well let let that i mean i think our listeners are relatively mature um they'll be able to handle a few f's and j's won't they i don't know we've warned them we really thought this through like where we were going to sit and that very slick was yep you've got a jess phillips sandwich going on you'll all right? Well, Jess, what would you prefer? Or what do you prefer? The gentle world of podcasting or the hurly-burly of politics? I like them both. Good answer.

Yeah, that's like a Lib Dem answer, isn't it? A little bit in the middle, sitting on a sort of slightly uncoloured chair. Do you want to change? Would you feel more happy? No, no, yes if I can only sit on a red chair um I like that the podcast which is essentially an invitation for people to be nice to each other is a nice break from the fact that most of my job is people criticizing me and me criticising them, which is, you know, gets a bit wearing at times.

So it's quite nice to invite people to talk about the things that they like, especially from opposition. My job is to whinge. That's literally the job. Whinging. Like being like, you're not doing this properly. Everything's terrible. Talking about really, you know,

going to the worst possible case example to prove your point that it is quite nice to you know have people come on and talk about uh you know nice things in their life and the people that they love yeah how did the podcast start was it Was it your very own idea? The honest answer is no, it wasn't my very own idea. I'd like to say that I'm always going to be honest, within reason. So during lockdown, I had one particular really nasty case of a woman who, I didn't know her very well, cysylltiad o ddyn, dydw i ddim yn ei gwybod yn dda iawn, dyn geordd, sy'n byw yn fy nhyrfa. Roeddwn i wedi cwrdd â hi oherwydd roedden ni wedi sefydlu ar y cwmniad annwyl ar y Cymru. Roedd hi'n cwmniad â fi ac roedd hi wedi rhoi ei put her husband in an ambulance and never seen him again um he died of covid this was in like week two or three of the pandemic um and because we didn't know anything then like she her son and

daughter were like rapping on the door trying to get to her in this traumatic time but because she'd been exposed to covid she was absolutely terrified and she was like she was ringing me and saying i'm bleaching everything i'm like scrubbing my skin i'm gonna i'm gonna kill my kids if i see them and i'm just gonna lock myself away and i found this case so harrowing um of this woman just like overnight her whole life totally changed not knowing what to expect at all um and so I wrote a letter to my husband and my children and my friends and I told my friends to do the same because it was like a shocking realisation that any one of us could just be put into an ambulance and taken away and we'd never have got to say the things

that we wanted to say to them and I tweeted about it and audio always got in touch with me and said oh would you be interested in coming and talking to people about who they would write these letters to because I think it's like a nice way to get people to talk about their loved ones

without them having been dead. So that's always nice, isn't it? Do you imagine what your funeral will be like? Well, all the time, me too. Any long car journey, I listen to the songs, I hope will be played. I used to think I might qualify for one of those memorial services at All Souls

outside Broadcasting House. You've completely blown it now. I'm not so sure now to be honest do you think i will not no no i don't think so i think your times radio house maybe they'll do one outside there maybe just at a news agents with a very small pile of the paper i every time we in the parliamentary labour party every time a previous member of parliament dies we do like a minute silence and then somebody does a uh like a bit of a speech about them yeah and every time when the clock is ticking as somebody's died i think people will be standing in this room for me one day i'll be i'll be dead

one day and they'll be standing and listening awkwardly hoping their phone doesn't go off in the minute silence um this is all really cheerful stuff isn't it um i just what you know you talk about um the lady who is in such distress contacting her mp it's that side of politics that people don't really understand isn't it because yeah you know we watch politics live or whatever it might be and listen to our podcasts of choice about all the all the awful stuff in politics but the human stuff that you're obliged to do on your constituency is off the scale actually isn't it oh yeah yeah i mean obviously there's some that don't bother but um by and large the vast majority do um the human element of uh being a member of parliament is

the bit that nobody actually knows about like most people hate members of parliament except their own one because they once had to go to them for something yeah it's like being a social worker essentially and i run my office like a community center because the tory's closed all the community centers in my constituency um so i'm literally the only state-funded building left. Welcome to Tory Britain. But are you allowed to be freer now that you're not on the BBC? Yes.

Oh, God, yeah. You're let free. But we're still in the very early stages of that. So you haven't transferred into saying, like, you know, this dress is really weird. I think it's probably a little bit like when you come out of a hostage situation. situation you have to be a safe house and debrief yourself for quite a long time i'm not sure we're quite out of that yet yeah we're getting there we're getting yeah gosh it must be have any of your constituents been at all uh surprised or bothered by the fact that you've entered a different kind of arena well one of them is one of the producers of it so no

they're not bothered at all, they're bothered if they can't see you if they can't see you when they want to see you then they'll be like I mean obviously the people who don't like me already say the thing they will use it but they were never going to vote for me anyway

in the media and in politics you have to learn not to give a toss about the people who are going to hate you regardless, like in fact lean into it a bit, make them hate you more but no, my constituents aren't arsed you often get this

if you do a cover shot on the Times magazine or something and they make you wear a jacket that costs more than the average mortgage in your constituency. You don't get to keep that jacket, by the way. More's the pity. People are like, what would the people in your constituency say? And I think if you said to the people in my constituency,

do you want to dress up in really expensive clothes and have your photos taken, they'd be like, yeah, all right. They like it, by and large. They also like having somebody who's a bit of a celebrity as their Member of Parliament. They're like, Alan, Jess is at the door. Can you believe it? She's knocked on the door.

Alan, come down. voiceover describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone accessibility there's more to iphone has there been something good for you personally in just being able to slightly change gear and be something else because on your podcast you're very much a host and yes that is nice it is nice and actually the skill is the same. The years and years of dealing with people's traumatic situations and dealing with basically being able to ask people the questions

that are unaskable. Because when you're interviewing people and you have to sort of push them to get an answer, I have to ask people if they've been ritually raped and I have to ask people if like you know they're immediately safe in the next 24 hours so I have I have an incredible like lack of filter with asking people questions about their life because I've spent decades doing that and And also, there is something about the hierarchy of being a Member of Parliament, even with the people who come on the podcast,

that you have a certain level of authority that people feel like, oh, I can tell you. Like, it'll be all right if I tell you these things. People are always crying on it. I mean, that's nice. I'm not slagging them off. They're crying in the conversation. They're quite intimate, those conversations, aren't they? So it's rather nice that they cry or feel able to cry.

Can we just ask a little bit about the sisterhood at Westminster? How much of a level of sisterly support is there for the current Prime Minister? Across, I mean, across, because there are real friendships, aren't there? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are. I'm not sure. There's this big thing made of Therese Coffey and Liz Truss being best mates and I can't say I ever noticed that before she was the prime minister but um apparently that's the case I wrote an article during the leadership contest that said stop calling Liz Truss stupid um because um I don't think she's any stupider than Boris Johnson but it gets thrown at her a lot more

and there is an element of blonde woman going to call her stupid so there is an element of after her first PMQs Lisa Nandy, I was like that she was wooden, she was rubbish and Lisa Nandy was like, I thought she answered the questions there is an element where the women

are going to cut her not cut her slack the the where Liz Truss falls down is that she does absolutely fuck all for any woman in the country um well yes so um we don't feel able to completely agree with that yeah yeah so um you will don't worry give it time when your mortgage has gone up um but the you know that's the problem is that your sisterhood can't just be extended one way so my sisterhood actually was quite heavily extended to Teresa May because actually she did try and put in place policies that were feminist that were for victims of domestic abuse that were for victims of modern slavery that that took account of parental leave and things she did try i mean she was completely hamstrung by lots of things

other events um but yeah with liz truss like she she has so far in one day taken the biggest transfer from purse to wallet in her budget where the people she's hitting are part-time working women and the people she's giving money to are the richest men so my my sorority is on thin ice okay it's being stretched to breaking quite a stretch it is quite a stretch listen to lots of the political podcasts that are out there at the moment? They're many and varied. They exist, I think. I think most of them are highly listenable too, but that's because I live outside the Westminster bubble.

So I feel they're telling me something new. But as someone who knows all of that... I do listen to them, like Newscast and now the new one. Now the people who have been free from the BBC.c news agents agents that's it um but more the ones i mean she really lent in didn't she immediately after leaving the baby emily yeah she really really lent in perhaps a bit maybe a bit braver than us what do you think no don't say it jess no no no i don't think it's necessarily that i don't think she'll be back for the Reith lectures, put it that way. But more the ones like Alastair Campbell's and Rory Stewart's

where they're discussing politics with a kind of... I don't listen to that, I'm afraid. No, OK. I don't listen to that. I find Rory Stewart a bit paternalistic, if I'm perfectly honest. And I find some of it a bit boyish. Not that one, because I've never actually listened to it so I don't know I'm just taking him at face value from previous experience I'm

sure it's very good I don't it's like when I worked in domestic abuse services people used to say did you watch that amazing documentary and I thought no I'll watch the bake-off because like I like whimsy at the weekend yeah but do you think podcasts are doing something in oh 100 in the space of politics yes in the space of politics for a start of what they are able to do which um actually programs like women's hour i always felt did this uh but that political news doesn't give any room for nuance and conversation and understanding and I think we've babied the British public that they can't understand complicated difficult issues like the idea that any policy that you could pass is great for everyone it's just for the birds and I don't

think that the British public are stupid and yet the sort of 24-hour news cycle that they have been fed doesn't allow for that nuanced conversation to happen whereas in the space of podcasting that absolutely has been able to happen people are able to discuss actual ideas and you also because it's not necessarily you people aren't necessarily looking at it for news lines now some things they will be like the news agents like every time they put on a podcast what they are looking for is to land the line that's going to end up in five different newspapers the next day and you can feel that from it I think which is fine because it's like a news program that is contemporary but you can go on and discuss ideas for example like uh you know a basic wage for everybody um the idea of um uh of discussing

different ways of of parental leave without it being like the labour party says all drugs should be legalized and like if I say something on the news about how drugs policy in our country isn't working that will be the headline the next day whereas if I sit on a podcast and talk about drugs policy with experts in that field and people who have experience it's a lot better it's like you know it gives space and and warmth and understanding to those subjects, which is really important, I think. If you were asked...

Sorry, I know that we need Q&A in a sec. But if you were asked to form a kind of duo, like Jane and I have done, obviously, you know, we were forced into it at some point. You're so good together, though. But if you were... I mean, look, you've become each other. We've become each other.

Completely symbiotic. Who would you most likely... most like to do a chat, chat, chat kind of podcast with? Oh, yeah, who would I like to... I mean, genuinely somebody I don't agree with. Actually, I don't know whether that's your situation. Do you sometimes disagree? Yeah, I genuinely...

Like the sort of Ian Dale Jackie Smith pairing is the idea that they're from political different political wings I think that the interest would come from me sitting and chatting with somebody that is completely the polar opposite to me if anything this is now becomes like a news

line everything I fucking say is like somebody like a news line everything I fucking say um is like somebody like Boris Johnson because I don't think that anybody who thinks that they have any understanding of what he's like or even a basic impression has got the right one from the man that I have spent my time with um I'm not this is not in sympathy to him but he's just nothing like he comes across on the television. Absolutely. He's not better. In many ways, he's worse. But, like, I would...

And because somebody so evasive, so, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I just wouldn't stand for it. Like, and I just would really like to sit... I'd love to hear that. Yeah, like, I would just be like, why don't you neck in with your whiff-waff? Tell me what you actually think.

The truth is, I'm amazed we haven't already got Bozzercast, and he hasn't actually been given a podcast. I am surprised. I'm surprised, yeah. Oh, sorry. Let's manifest it. Don't manifest that. Are there any questions from the audience

that you would like to put to our three panellists? Thank you very much. If you get in power in a couple of years, will that change how you're sort of the editor of your podcast and what you say? Will you be under more of a sort of whip or more restricted, do you think? Yes.

What is your dream job? In a future Labour cabinet, which post do you hope to be offered justice or home is the areas that i really really care about justice and home affairs and what's the first thing you try and do i mean i would massively um need to mainstream the idea of women's safety into every single government department because it literally just sits as a sort of byline, a page in a manifesto and if it isn't in welfare policy

if it isn't in housing policy like it needs to, it can't just be there, look we care, we gave a few million quid to refuges, it has to be fundamental to every government department so basically I want the job of pissing everybody off and saying why don't you care about women that's the job yn gyffredinol i bob adran Llywodraeth. Felly, yn y bôn, rwy'n hoffi'r swydd o gwneud i bawb ddifrif a dweud,

"- Mae'n ddim yn bwysig i chi, dwi wedi cwmio am ddynion." Yn y bôn, mae'n y swydd rwy'n hoffi. Ydych chi'n defnyddio'r sgwrs hwn? Ie. Ysgol. Yn benodol, byddaf yn defnyddio'r sgwrs hwn. Ond, ie, nid oes anghenion am hynny. Os oeddwn i'n weinidog Llywodraeth,

ac mewn gwirionedd, mae hynny'n gwestiwn da o ran y byddwn i'n rhaid i mi wneud penderfyniad, oherwydd ymddiriedaeth i allu meddwl am rywbeth, it's a good question in the sense that then I have to make a decision because um like the desire to be able to think something want a policy and get it to happen actually if I was a minister arguably I'd be in a better position to do that but because I have a voice that exists outside of politics like which is the best way for me to use my voice for the ends I seek, both for the Labour Party and for the country. And it might not be being a minister. It might be that being a rabble rouser and cutting through is more important and I have to make that decision. But I want to be a minister for a bit.

Please give it up for our wonderful panel. Thank you to Jane, Jess and Fee. give it up for our wonderful panel thank you to jane jess and fee the fantastic jess phillips talking to us at podcast day 24 i thought she was absolutely superb and i would really like to hear that podcast with her and boris boris johnson boris johnson yep uh it's i would only because of what she said that she wouldn't let him be the person that he pretends to be yes

she would push him into a corner but then he wouldn't agree to do it would he no but we can we can but hope we can but hope we'll sow the seed

everything's crossed you have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Yeah, embrace the live radio jeopardy.

Thank you for listening, and hope you can join us off-air very soon. Goodbye. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with anna from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone