Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said she hated serving in Keir Starmer’s government and believed he lacked the drive to deliver policy with sufficient urgency. Her comments highlight Labour tensions over progress on violence against women and girls, an area where she says government commitment has fallen short of manifesto ambitions.

Phillips, who resigned in May in an unsuccessful effort to remove Starmer, said she was unhappy for most of her time in the role and would not return as a junior minister. She argued that fully implementing the government’s violence-against-women-and-girls strategy would cut such violence by about 25%, well below Labour’s 2024 pledge to halve it, and criticised departments she felt did not treat the issue seriously enough.