On Friday 21st September, Jess Phillips, the MP for Yardley, visited KEHS and spoke to students and staff. Jess is a former pupil of KE Camp Hill and a graduate in Economics and Social Policy. She has represented Yardley since 2015. Jess gave us a fascinating insight into the world of Westminster and her road to becoming a Labour Party MP.
Her description of Westminster was at times less than complimentary: a place of acute sexism and medieval type power brokerage. She argued, it is unlikely, that the Brexit deal will be concluded in the best interests of the country, but will simply reflect the balance of power within the Government and the various different power groups. She described both the main political parties as institutionally sexist where it is still very difficult for a woman to be elected leader. In addition, she said that Parliament did not represent the UK population in terms of gender, race, religion or income level. As such she felt that Parliament could not make laws that truly benefit ordinary citizens.
Jess’s main message was that people need to engage more in the political process because without that engagement certain groups in society will always be politically disadvantaged. In particular, young people should get out and vote, otherwise they risk continuing to be on the wrong end of political decisions.
A big thank you to Jess for taking time out of her busy day to speak to us and well done to Lola in the Upper Sixth for organising the event.
