Chrissie Maher award 2019

Jess Phillips

Like never before, 2019 needed a straight-talking MP, as outraged and as passionate as the rest of us, an angry and eloquent voice as dismayed as we were by what was happening in Parliament. In Jess Phillips, we had one. She’s the closest we have to a direct, honest, plain-speaking politician, a working mum whose children attend a school that closes early on Fridays due to Government cuts. She speaks her mind, and spends plenty of time with her constituents. None could accuse her of confusing them with Latinate phrases, or of being disinterested in their plight.

Jess is a fearless advocate of plain-speaking democracy as political communication threatens to become increasingly inaccessible. Sadly, she may be needed more than ever before in 2020 as we head for an inevitably messy exit from the EU. She’s an example to the vast majority of other MPs, and makes the Houses of Parliament a lot more human.