Jess Phillips: the latest victim of Centrist Hack Syndrome
As I reported this morning, Jess Phillips is pulling out of Labour’s leadership race. Here is the latest victim of Centrist Hack Syndrome. This is basically when centrist journalists fluff up chosen politicians privately and publicly: “If you take this leap, you will be overwhelmed by adoration and flourish”. They are granted puff piece interviews in print and generously soft TV interviews, fawning magazine front covers, described in hushed tones as the next big thing, as the politician the Tories are really frightened of, as that unique sort of politician with real star quality and “cut through”. In exchange, they offer a never-ending supply of attack lines on the Labour leadership, both on and off the record. And then, eventually, they collide with political reality. Previous victims include the founders of Change UK, most notably Chuka Umunna, as well as the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson (and arguably Rory Stewart, too).
The reason they succumb to this syndrome is they get hugely positive, supportive coverage across most of the media, including often from the right, which makes them think politics is easy and they are innately very good at it. They don’t realise this mollycoddling is primarily because they were useful to bash Labour’s leadership. They are, in other words, being used.
Then what happens is they take the leap, and instead of flourishing, they are suddenly subjected to mild media scrutiny for the first time, which is very disorientating, makes them realise politics is actually very hard, and their campaigns start to implode. Their outriders start complaining that their opponents are taking the quotes of their chosen candidates out of context and unfairly twisting their back histories, engaging in dishonest hatchet jobs to demonise and undermine: the same people who shrugged at similar treatment dealt out to the Labour leadership as just one of those facts of life a frontline politician has to accept and adapt to. Having assailed the incompetence of the Labour leadership under daily, relentless, often completely unhinged fire for the best part of half a decade, the candidates are subjected to significantly less pressure for a much shorter period of time, and yet find themselves exposed. And to be fair, if you have never endured meaningful media scrutiny, having any fire turned on you is a profoundly unsettling experience.
There are some things Phillips should be commended for. She made an unequivocal defence of migrants, calling for the party to celebrate immigration and not “appease” right-wing xenophobia. If there is now consensus about this across the Labour party, it should be celebrated. That she also made statements in support of trans rights — needed, given big past question marks over her position, although undermined by some of the language she used — is courageous in the current climate, and led to her being viciously attacked by the obsessive anti-trans cult who try to intimidate anyone who dares to back this most marginalised of minorities.
Where I am less sympathetic to Jess Phillips is that she presented herself as a feminist champion taking on leftwing bullyboys, but boasted about telling Diane Abbott — the most abused female politician in Britain — to “fuck off”. Even worse, she actually lied about doing so. Lying while boasting about abusing a notoriously abused female MP while presenting yourself as a champion of women in politics is well, certainly an audacious stance.
Phillips also said the one Labour MP who she would deselect is Diane Abbott, who became the first black female elected MP in the 1980s — when Phillips was 5 years old — overcoming the sort of formidable odds which a white politician from a comfortably well off middle class background, like Phillips, never faced. That she has faced no real scrutiny about this during this campaign underlines the fact that different rules apply to Labour’s different wings: just imagine, for a moment, the justified fire Rebecca Long-Bailey would face if she had done this to a black female politician from the right of the party?
But Phillips should be a salutary warning to other would-be victims of Centrist Hack Syndrome. The people willing you on don’t necessarily know as much about politics as they claim, and they don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart either. Politics is particularly gruelling for Labour’s left flank, but as Matt Zarb-Cousin has noted, the Tories are playing politics on easy mode in a country dominated by an often hysterically right wing media ecosystem. Whoever wins Labour’s leadership contest will soon find that out.
ADDENDUM
Some have responded with: Ah, but what about Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t that the same!
Well, no. Corbyn stood in 2015 with the expectation he would lose the contest — his private measure of success was getting 15–20% of the vote, and when he got on the ballot he said “now make sure I don’t fucking win” — but would shift the political debate to the left. As it turned out the other wings of Labour were politically and intellectually exhausted and therefore he won by a landslide.
