An Evening with Jess Phillips: In Conversation with Helen Lewis

Jess Phillips is not your conventional politician. If Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, has been criticised for his lack of charisma, Phillips has it in abundance. MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015 she has never shied away from controversy nor has she been afraid to veer away from Labour Party lines to uphold her political principles.

At 14, Phillips left the Labour Party after Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq. In 2016, she was a vocal critic of former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and resigned in protest over his leadership. Most recently, in late 2023, she quit the Labour frontbench over Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza. She has never played it safe.

On August 8 Phillips returns to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss what might be a new era in British politics. In conversation with journalist Helen Lewis, she will draw on themes of her latest book Let’s Be Honest to uncover a deep rot that she believes has set into British politics and present a bold vision for how to create a new politics that reinstates integrity as its primary virtue.

Join us at the Kiln just weeks after the general election to hear from one of Labour’s most recognisable faces about Britain’s integrity deficit and what a new government should do about it.