Labour MP Jess Phillips has said there is a feeling Labour is ‘playing politics’ over Brexit which was ‘irritating everyone and pleasing no one’, and explained why she would continue to fight to do the right thing on the issue.
The Birmingham Yardley MP told Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday the party’s position had been understandable because of the split in Leave and Remain constituencies, but it had become ‘confusing’ for MPs, party members and the public.
She added: ‘I am not going to pretend that Jeremy Corbyn was put in a really easy position and he just botched it.
‘At a point what you need to do is show some real leadership and say ‘look, I know not everyone is going to agree with this, but this is our position’ because at the moment we are sort of irritating everyone and pleasing no one.’
She feared that she could lose her seat for speaking out about the issue, but said her constituents’ jobs were more important.
But she argued voters in her seat trust her to do the right thing.
She said: ‘Not all of them but no constituency is full of people who universally support their MP.
‘My constituents don’t all think the same thing. They didn’t all vote leave because they hate immigrants – lots of them are immigrants. They didn’t all vote leave because they wanted to take back control. They didn’t all vote leave because they hated the customs union.
‘The vast majority of people voted leave because they wanted to show the system that they weren’t happy, and who can blame them?
‘Lots of them may well disagree with me and that is democracy, and if they disagree with me they don’t have to vote for me, and I may lose my job but frankly their jobs are more important.’
Phillips added that there are major issues in the country that ‘should be front page news in ordinary times’ but ‘are now just being completely forgotten’.
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