Former Home Office minister Jess Phillips has admitted to pulling a sickie to avoid questions in Parliament on Lord Peter Mandelson.
The former safeguarding minister said she called in ill because she could not honestly claim the then-ambassador was “good at his job”.
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Lord Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to the US over his historic links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Ms Phillips claimed at the time she had threatened to quit Sir Keir Starmer’s government several times over the botched appointment.
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Now, during an interview with presenter Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Labour MP said: “Mandelson hadn’t yet been sacked, but we were in that sort of indeterminate week where the Prime Minister was giving him his full confidence.
“That week, it was Home Office questions and I didn’t go. Because I said if anybody asks me a question about whether Mandelson was good at his job I would say no.
“So I said I was sick. Luckily, I then did (fall ill). I think if I lie about being sick, I get sick.”
In the interview, Ms Phillips also ruled herself out from joining Andy Burnham’s administration, hinting she may quit politics altogether.
The former party leadership candidate held onto her Birmingham Yardley seat at the 2024 General Election by just 693 votes against Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre.
Addressing the crowd after she was declared victor, Ms Phillips attempted to make her speech at the ICC in Birmingham before being immediately interrupted by jeers and chants from pro-Palestine protesters.
Ms Phillips said: “This election has been…” before being met with “free, free Palestine” chants from protesters in the audience.
She then called on the protesters to be “thrown out” of the venue, as they were escorted out by security.
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The Birmingham Yardley constituency in the east of the city, which Ms Phillips has held since 2015, has a Muslim population of 42.6 per cent, the 10th highest in the UK.
Speaking about the election campaign at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Ms Phillips said: “I live a half-life, and I would like to live a full life.
“I’m not going to be there for 30 years. The last election was awful. If it were to be like the election I faced last time, I wouldn’t stand.”
She had quit the Labour front bench the previous year to back a Commons vote for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Ms Phillips also addressed her relationship with Nicola Sturgeon adding she would not go for a drink with the former Scottish First Minister.
Responding to a joke about the former first minister of Scotland drinking with Ms Phillips while she was in the city, she said: “Me and Nicola Sturgeon were not out drinking.
“I’d have to ask where it came from if she paid for a drink.”
Ms Sturgeon’s estranged husband Peter Murrell was jailed for five years and three months in June for embezzling £400,000 from the SNP.
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