PM’s wife should be able to remain ‘private’ as she has no formal Government role, the Labour MP says
Lady Starmer should be left alone, Jess Phillips has said in the wake of the “freebies” row.
The junior Home Office minister said that the husband, wife or partner of the prime minister should either have a formal role as they do in the US, or be a private citizen, and that the current system was a “ridiculous fudge”.
She said her “personal preference” would be for Lady Starmer to be left alone but predicted Britain would likely end up with a US-style system.
The spouse did not have an official office or secretarial support, yet was expected to be a “prop” for the prime minister and be a campaigner on public issues, Ms Phillips added.
Sir Keir Starmer’s wife has recently become embroiled in controversy over donations after it emerged she had a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer.
Sir Keir has paid back more than £6,000 for gifts and hospitality he has received since entering Number 10, which included clothing for Lady Starmer.
Ms Phillips questioned whether, if Kamala Harris were to become the next president of the US, her husband would receive the same level of scrutiny as Lady Starmer.
“I hate it. I hate wife as prop in any circumstance,” Ms Phillips told an event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival to promote her new book, Let’s Be Honest.
“She either has no role and she can be a private individual and just be left alone in everything and we should just agree to that, or, like in America, she has a role.
“Here we have this ridiculous fudge system in the middle, and I think that it should be the former, I imagine it ends up being the latter.
“We don’t have landing zones for women, we don’t, we just don’t”, she said.
Ms Philips described Lady Starmer as “incredibly nice” and said the Prime Minister is very protective of her and his family.
“But you have to formalise it in some way and create some infrastructure or otherwise she’s been expected to do all this stuff without any office, any secretariat, any support,” she said.
“I’ve met her a number of times and she’s an incredibly nice woman. The way they keep their children really private gives you an idea of what she is like.
“It just must be horrible, and I don’t think that there is anyone who Keir is more protective of than her.
“I feel like there’s got to be some sort of norm about what that means to be the family in 10 Downing Street that I don’t think that we’ve got right in this country.”
Ms Phillips said if she ever became prime minister her family would remain in Birmingham and not live in Downing Street.
“There are two things that wouldn’t happen… and we never had a prime minister whose family didn’t live in London, I don’t think,” she said.
“My family would not live at 10 Downing Street, because they live in Birmingham, and the idea of ‘I’ve got this job, say goodbye to your friends and family, and we’re off’… And there’s no way that my husband would have anything to do with it.”
The Labour Party election manifesto made a commitment to halve violence against women and girls, which Ms Phillips described as “massively ambitious”.
“Do I think it is realistic? I think it’s a f—ing hard job to do. That’s the absolute truth,” she said.
“If we don’t manage to do it in a decade, I will be sad, but I will be sad that there’s violence against women and girls, as I am sad today.
“We put a big ambitious target and I would be much, much sadder if I hadn’t made an ambitious target and it didn’t mean that the Government was forced to try than I would be if we fall foul of the target.”
