The Birmingham MP Jess Phillips has written a new book called Mother. She reflects on losing her own mum, having children – and fighting for women’s rights

It is fitting that before Jess Phillips can sit down to talk about her new book on motherhood, she has to spend a few seconds encouraging her son to go back to his school work, with all the plain-speaking (“go back to school!”) we’ve come to expect from the Labour MP for Birmingham, Yardley. She straightens herself on her sofa, and smiles through my laptop screen.

For Phillips, as for many working parents, this lockdown has been hard. She wasn’t impressed with the prime minister’s open letter of praise to parents last month. “I don’t want his patronising, thanks,” she says. “I want the government to pull their finger out and to have noticed that mothers across the country existed a year ago, and to have done something about that.”

Continue reading…

You May Also Like

Ukraine: multiple explosions hit central Kyiv and other cities

Moscow launches wave of strikes across country in response to Saturday’s attack…

Have a biscuit and shut up … now psychologists have found ‘hanger’ is a real thing, here’s how to deal with it

Study reveals what we already suspected: if we’re hungry, we’re not happy.…

Studying health inequalities has been my life’s work. What’s about to happen in the UK is unprecedented | Michael Marmot

Poverty is literally a matter of life and death for those on…

‘It’s cheap therapy, innit!’: comedian Mawaan Rizwan on family, adulthood and his brilliant new TV series

Comic Mawaan Rizwan has never taken to adulthood. His childlike way of…