Attacks on lawyers for blocking the removal of migrants are a “pathetic” attempt to shift blame by a government congenitally incapable of taking responsibility for its own mistakes, Labour’s Jess Phillips has said.
The shadow Home Office minister also condemned the use of the Bibby Stockholm barge to hold asylum seekers, calling it a pointless gimmick, which seemed intended to be “nothing but a headline”.
Speaking to the Guardian during a visit to Nottingham, Phillips was pointedly scathing about Suella Braverman – “I literally wouldn’t let her take my bins out” – and described Rishi Sunak as someone with “no human in him”, seemingly incapable of relating to voters.
Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said she was alarmed at the increasing tendency of the government to target individuals such as Jacqueline McKenzie, the head of immigration at a leading law firm, who was portrayed in a Conservative dossier sent to newspapers as a “lefty lawyer” trying to block deportations.
“It’s like the government’s got a bingo reel of, ‘Who are we going to blame today? It’s Jacqueline’s turn to take blame for the fact that we’ve totally messed up,’” Phillips said. “They are so pathetic.
“Maybe it’ll be different when I’m in government, but I’d like to, on the record, commit to saying that when I’m doing something wrong, I’m going to try and say, take bloody responsibility.”
The chaos surrounding the Bibby Stockholm, where a small number of asylum seekers were briefly housed on the barge before being removed after the legionella bacteria was found in its water system, was emblematic of a failing Home Office, the Birmingham Yardley MP said.
“It was inevitable. The boat is nothing but a headline. It was never a solution to the problem. There are no fewer people in hotels in Birmingham than there were before the Bibby Stockholm,” she said.
“And so it’s a poetic justice that it ended the way that it did, with the government being shown just exactly how useless the Home Office is.”
Speaking after meeting a group of local officials, police and others at Nottingham’s Rock City venue to discuss ways to improve women’s safety following a reported spate of drug-spiking incidents in the city, Phillips said the Home Office’s obsession with divisive politics meant it was neglecting such vital issues.
“The idea that they have the levers they have, not just legislatively, and the thing they choose to bang on about is divide and rule culture – it’s rubbish,” she said. “If they had the same will about violence against women and girls that they have about stoking culture wars, things would have advanced.”
Much of this, she argued, was the personal responsibility of Braverman, who has also faced criticism within Conservative circles for an approach to the job that combines combativeness with, opponents argue, a lack of notable achievements.
“When confidence in crime and justice is so low, the idea that Suella Braverman is the answer to the problem, or any problem – I literally wouldn’t let her take my bins out,” Phillips said.
“Confidence in policing has never been so low, and the government’s big offer on crime recently was, ‘We’re committed to investigating every crime’. It’s just like, slow hand clap. It’s like them spitting in your face and telling you it’s raining.”
While saying Braverman would be, on the face of it, “an incredibly easy act to follow” for Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, Phillips reiterated warnings from Labour’s frontbench that a tight fiscal position would mean any work to restore areas such as the justice system could be slow.
“The reality is that while I won’t have the moon on a stick, will and knowledge goes a very long way,” she said, saying Labour would introduce a specific offence to spike someone’s drink or inject them with drugs or alcohol, and put sexual violence specialists in every police force.
Many of the government’s current failings, Phillips said, could be put down to Sunak, a prime minister she described as “useless” and out of touch.
“He’s good at reading a brief, which was better than Boris Johnson. So that’s something: man can read,” she said. “But I don’t know what Rishi Sunak cares about. I don’t know who he is. Rishi Sunak doesn’t hang out with people like me or my constituents.”
Phillips recounted the first time she talked to Sunak, when she happened to pass him in parliament during the Conservative leadership contest he eventually lost to Liz Truss.
“I said, ‘I’m ready for Rishi!’ He was like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘It’s your tagline, mate.’ He’s got no human in him. He has obviously never, ever had anyone slightly take the mick out of him. What world do you live in, where that is not your language of love?”
