to bring the corrupt and the powerful to justice. his party — the pti — organised the rally to urge the government to call a snap election. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with, rather than an interrogation of, someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. my guest this week is the red wall made flesh. a labour mp born in the north—east, who now represents one of the sunderland seats, was brought up in the area by a

labour—supporting mum. bridget phillipson, who is now labour's shadow education secretary, finds herself surrounded by 11 tory mps in the north east, something which would have been unthinkable when she was born. unthinkable, indeed, before brexit, which was backed by huge numbers of people in her own patch, but not by her. she campaigned for remain and then for a second referendum. bridget is now, as i say, labour's shadow education secretary. education, she says, is her passion because school transformed her life. bridget phillipson, welcome to political thinking. nice to see you. that phrase �*red wall'. a little bird tells me it winds you up a bit. why? ijust think it's a tory choice of words, and ijust think it's a nonsense kind of framing, mainly because it kind of imagines that everyone in a given area has the same kind of view and it's a caricature.

people are more complicated than that and there's nothing i hate more than some of the lazy stereotypes and caricatures you get about people from my part of the world. what, the idea that it's all kind of flat cap—wearing, white, working class people who care passionately about immigration and getting out of the eu? well, we've got a really strong and proud industrial heritage, but, you know, the last mine in my constituency closed in 1986, so we've moved on a lot and things have changed and we've got, you know, lots of great strengths too and i think it risks a certain kind of negativity and a certain world view about our best days being behind us, whereas i think, with the right kind of government, a labour government, our best days are definitely ahead of us. i'm glad you told us that because we might not have realised you thought it! now, we'll come on to how that might happen and the views of people in your patch a little bit later on, but let's go back to that idea that education is your passion. you say it transformed your life. did your life need transforming in that way? i think, like lots of kids growing up in in my part of the world, in washington and the north—east in the �*80s

and early �*90s, it wasn't it wasn't a great time to be growing up there and crime was high, youth unemployment was very high and there was a sense of of decline. it was it was really tough at times. education made such a big impact on my life. it opened doors i never thought possible. but, you know, that didn't happen for all children that i grew up with. what drives me today is that i know that it's working class kids that suffer the most when schools let them down. that's why i want to make sure that there is high standards in all of our schools and that excellence really is for everyone. now, you did have a good school. we'll talk about it in a second. you also had a family that believed in education, a granddad who wanted you to read what from quite a young age. he used to give me lots and lots of books from a very young age. even when i was at university, he was sending me books

he picked up at second hand shops telling me that i should continue to expand my thinking and challenge myself. for me, it's about education being something that matters to us all right throughout our lives. it's not something that ends when you leave the classroom. for lots of working class people in particular that value on self—education, on making that impact yourself. that's why a lot of the miners�* halls and miners�* wellfares in my constituency had libraries and had newspapers because they knew that education was what would make the biggest difference for working class people. and was your granddad getting you, as it were, educational books or just great stories? just absolutely everything. so everything from denis healey to tony benn to agatha christie, french history, the lot. he just felt there was so much richness in the world, so much to learn, so much to understand and you can't do all of that at school. so a bit of political education, though, from quite a young age. you're getting healey, you're getting benn, you're getting labour history, a labour—supporting family, i assume.

was politics something you talked about at home, you argued about at home? we talked about it a lot. both my grandparents were nurses in the nhs. they'd come overfrom ireland and had trained and worked in the north east latterly. they were really passionate about public services and about the role that they were doing, but we would have, particularly certainly with my granddad, you'd have a massive stack of papers. we'd always argue hammer and tongs about what was going on in the world. he just liked to debate and discuss and to challenge. and then my grandma would, you know, get fed up and disappear off upstairs and listen to radio eireann for a while as we kind of argued it out. yeah. and your mum, it was tough. she was a single mum. relatively young, in her mid 20s. yeah. when your dad disappeared. yeah. my mum brought me up entirely on her own. i never met my dad. he was never involved in my life. that's not a source of any particular sadness. we did well. it was a loving family. but i did... you did always feel a sense ofjudgment about yourfamily. there were fewer single parent families then than there are now.

and this was also the time, of course, when there was big tory rhetoric around single parent families. around the idea of being on benefits, wasn't it? yeah. and the suggestion somehow that maybe you'd got pregnant in order to get benefits. yeah. that peter lilley speech, you know i remember all of that and it made me so angry that that kind ofjudgement was being made about our family when i knew how hard my mam was working. remind us of the speech because there'll be plenty of people who'll forget. peter lilley was secretary of state for social security back then. a job title doesn't exist now. yeah. he talked in the conference speech about single parents on benefits and talked in very disparaging terms, as if somehow that people did this to get, you know, a council house. i mean, it was really offensive. he mimicked a song, didn't he? "i've got a little list", he said, "of benefit offenders who i'll soon be rooting out,

who never would be missed. never would be missed". "there's young ladies who get pregnant", he said, "just to jump the housing queue and the dads who won't support the kids of ladies they have kissed", all said from the stage of the tory party conference. well, i'll tell you, they weren't queuing up to live in the street that i grew up in! there were plenty of boarded—up houses at one point, so it was not some kind of lifestyle choice. and my mum worked really hard and we were a loving family and that's why i think that, you know, it should be for government to support families of all shapes and sizes, not to make judgments about about that. now, presumably he was making that pitch because he believed that there was a constituency for those views. did you feel when you were growing up with a single mum who couldn't work because she was looking after you, did you think that there were people around you who werejudging? i often felt a sense ofjudgment. we were a bit different. we're a single parent family. there weren't many of us

at that point, until some of my friends at school, until their parents sadly, you know, started to separate or to divorce. it was often we were the only single parent family and we were just as much a family as anybody else. and that's what really made me angry about it all. my mam couldn't work when i was younger and that was in part because there was no access to childcare, which is, sadly, you know, becoming increasingly a problem and is a real priority for me because if we want to make sure that people can play their full contribution in society, then i think that's where government has a role to play in making that as easy as possible. now, where you weren't getting help on benefits, there were other people who had to help even when you were little to get you a coat. yeah, one of our neighbors put a note through the door with some money in order to buy me a winter coat. it had come up in conversation. he was a really kind... he was retired by this point, really kind, didn't have very much money himself, but knew that we were struggling, that my mam was struggling to afford to buy me a winter coat and put the money through the door, which was wonderfully

kind and really generous and it's always stayed with me, but it's also stayed with me because i don't think we should ever get to a point as a society where people have to depend on the charity and goodwill of others in order to get by, it should be a given. and this happens today and this is this is what's facing so many families across britain at the moment. they don't have enough money in order to notjust afford the basics, but actually to give their children really enriching, happy, fulfilled childhoods. it should be a given that families can afford a coat for their kids. i want children to have much more in modern britain. it's an irony, isn't it, it's often the people who've got the least then find themselves burgled. yeah. not the people with the with the most. there was a lot of crime, i think, in washington in tyne and wear at that time. there was. we lived near a railway line, a mothballed railway line

at that point, and there wasjoyriding, so—called, was a big problem at that point. so you would frequently hear the sirens as the police came and chased the lads who abandoned the car at the railway line and and ran along. we were burgled on a number of occasions. we reported it. my mam stood up to the people who were responsible for it, the people that live locally, and we got our windows put in more than once as a result. what, because you'd made a stand? because we took a stand against it. because, you know, my mam wasn't prepared to tolerate our community experiencing that kind of terrible behaviour. it affected everyone, you know, there were many people who were just too frightened to do anything about it. my mam, being a pretty tough character, decided that she wasn't going to stand for it. what did that look like, you know, taking a stand? do you remember? was your mum literally standing up in front of teenage hoodlums and saying, you know, "stop it!" she was. and they came to our door to intimidate us. at least on one occasion, armed.

on one occasion with a baseball bat in order to intimidate her into not not reporting any of this to the police. do you remember that day? were you watching? i was in the house. i was aware subsequently of what had gone on. that's why i feel really strongly that, you know, where it comes to crime, it's working class communities that really suffer when things get out of control. we're in a position right now were increasingly i hear from people that they don't feel safe in their own community and they don't feel safe in their own home. i think it should be a really basic responsibility of government to make sure that we don't get to a situation where people are living in a constant state of fear. lots of people in my in my street were in that constant state of fear. so in that sense, i don't want to take you into the politics of this so much, but in that sense, you think crime is a must be a labour issue. crime is as much a labour issue as education or the national health service.

politics was clearly part of your life from a very young age. your mum was in the labour party, wasn't she? she was. so i grew up going to labour party meetings when i was from being very little because, you know, she didn't get to go unless i went along with her. i was pretty hard working at school, took things quite seriously. i was always just quite, quite focused on what i wanted to do. how young were you when you decided you wanted to be an mp? 12,13? was it already forming in your head? i had lots of ideas about what i wanted to do at that point. everything from i wanted to be a journalist at one point actually. and lots and lots of other things. yeah, lots and lots of other other ideas. i was latterly then quite keen on kind of singing and acting. my mam had signed us up for a drama class at pension community centre just down the road. so i used to go along there on a saturday because i was quite shy when i was younger and she said i should kind of come out

myself a bit more and learn, you know, learn to be a bit more confident. so and that was the way into becoming an extra a few times in byker grove, which was a high point of my childhood. now, remind us for people who don't know byker grove, the great tv show, ant and dec. yeah, it was around that time. yeah. and you were... what, an extra? 0h, idid. i was a, i played a part going into a school and i played a part hanging around a music venue, waiting for a group or something to arrive. so this, you know, the way these things work on television, it takes, you know, all day to get a very, very short clip of a group of us kind of walking into, walking into the front of a school or whatever it was. but what's fascinating about that story is that your mum thought you needed to build confidence. she thought that mattered. that was part of your education. i think it does matter and it matters that kids feel confident and don't feel held back because of their background. and it wasn't, i think just because i was shy, it was because, you know, kids from backgrounds like mine get told all too often what they shouldn't do or can't do. and it's about having

confidence and what you can achieve. and my granddad was the same. he was forever, certainly where it comes to young women was forever telling me, you know, don't let the blokes shout you down and make your voice heard. he spent a lifetime in meetings where, you know, blokes are more than happy to, you know, talk over women and meetings. he latterly became a nurse tutor. so he was he was working at the nursing school teaching. teaching mainly young women, obviously tended to be women coming through the nursing school. and it was a source of constant frustration that it was women getting talked over and talked talk down to. i'm hesitating before interrupting now! were you told when you were young that you should limit your horizons where careers suggested to you that looking backjust seemed ridiculously unambitious? low scale? it's not even sometimes what people say, although i'll come on to that. it's, it's just the sense of what's going on around you. i think that shapes thingsjust as much.

one area i do remember really well, we had at secondary school, they were really good at getting people in to give us kind of careers advice and and talks about things. and someone had come along from the local fire service and was talking about a career in the fire service. and i asked a question about the role for women in the fire service and was told, sorry, pet, it's not for it's not for women. and that was, that was in the mid 905. so i think it's notjust, it's a class issue... yeah. ..but i think all too often it comes down to quite clear divides about what men should do and what women should do. and we were a family that liked to challenge that kind of thinking. well, the truth is, you got over that advice. you got to oxford, you got involved in politics, you chaired the university labour club, and then went back home and became the mp, as you say, very young at the age of, at the age of 26. interesting choice to go home. plenty of people who go to the top universities, and that's it. they're out of the areas they grew up in.

they come to london, they do a big job, and then they pop home a couple of times a year to say hi. what drove you to go back to the place you were born? i just felt such a pull to to go back home. it's hard to put into words. ijust really wanted to go back to my community, my friends and family. the north east is a really special place. and, you know, people from the north east always often have that really strong sense of identity and wanting to, wanting to give something back. and ifelt i'd learnt a lot when i was away at university and it had shaped a lot about who i was. but i wanted to go back and, you know, make a contribution in my community. all this must shape your attitude to do this newjob. shadow education secretary. this isn't the place for a detailed policy interview. but in terms of your approach, what does it mean you think should be your approach if you get to be the next education secretary? i think we do just need to see a shift in our approach to education overall

as a country. so not something that is just one when we're at school orjust when we're sat in a classroom. something that we have with us right throughout our lives or from the earliest years, right through our lives as adults, none of us should ever think that we've finished learning or our education is at an end. and i think with the shift that we're going to see in the economy, with that transition around net zero, it's more important than ever that we give people opportunities throughout their lives to upskill. you went to estonia recently, didn't you? and they have state—run kindergartens. is that practical here? i mean, at a time we're talking of cutting spending and that frankly is what a labour government would face as well, difficult economic times. is that something really that we're going to be able to do in the future? we will, of course, face big challenges if we win the next election because the public finances are in a parlous state. but i don't think you can have a serious plan to grow your economy unless you've got a serious plan to deliver the early years and childcare that parents need right now. at the minute, we've got so many women who are cutting back on their hours

or giving up jobs they love because childcare just isn't there or they can't afford it. it's a big priority for me to put that right. i know it's a big priority for keir as well. he said that it's going to be on our next pledge card. in the last few weeks and months, shadow ministers have started to really prepare for the possibility of getting into government, haven't they? you've had permanent secretaries in, former senior officials in government departments to advise you, former ministers and so on. you now behave almost as if you're a minister. so before you make that promise, do you have to negotiate it with a shadow chancellor? if you had to sit around a table and argue, we're not quite at that stage, is that going to come in the months to come? rachel rees doesn't take much persuading that this has got to be a big priority for the next labour government because it's the real, it's the unaddressed area of education policy for me. couple of headlines because it's not a policy interview, butjust to see where you're going. private schools stay open. they pay more tax. they will pay more

tax under labour. ofsted's often criticised by teachers who think the inspections aren't fair on them. does it stay? is that the sort of flaw of standards that tony blair used to talk about? accountability matters and it matters to parents and working class kids. but ofsted has to change. to? standards in those schools that have been stuck for a long time. we know where those schools are. it's often in communities, working class communities, but we need to make those schools places that heads will want to go and work. and that, i think is part of the challenge. how do we attract the best people into those schools, but how do we support them when they're there? is the danger that you're alluding to, that a bad inspection actually makes a head who, maybe he's moved out of the area or never lived in the area think, "i'm not sure i want to go there.

"who would want to go to a school "if it's officially designated a failing school?" heads are under enormous pressure and there have been right during the pandemic. so and it's right it's an it's an important role that carries a big responsibility right at the heart of our communities. but what worries me is that when i visit schools nowadays and speak to heads, they say they haven't got people coming through and people are not willing to step up to headship, but particularly in the most challenging of circumstances. so i think thejob of government is to make it easier to support people to come forward, but actually to give them the help that they need while they're there. and that's why we said some of that money will raise we'll raise from taxing private school fees. we'll put that into supporting new heads. let's turn then to that phrase. you don't like the �*red wall'. the reason it's talked about, even if the phrase is overused, is that sense that the bond between the labour party and voters in certain parts of the country, particularly your home patch, the north east, was broken by brexit. did you spend a lot of time thinking, why did people in sunderland, a place we were told could never vote for brexit because they

were dependent onjobs from the nissan factory, that was dependent on the single market. did you spend a long time afterwards thinking, "why didn't they agree with me?" i'd spent a lot of time during the referendum campaign knocking on doors in sunderland, so the result didn't surprise me at all because time and again that sense of dissatisfaction about what was going on in the world, it went beyond our relationship with the european union. and part of it was around people feeling that they were being ignored by the government, that life was getting harder, that there was no prospect of anything changing, that, you know, thejobs that were there before, hard jobs, often jobs that left people, you know, pretty physically ill but were secure and had a decent level of pay, that they'd gone. and there was so much more that needed to change. and obviously it came off the back of a lot of that kind of austerity agenda, particularly the post—2015. but in many ways they've got worse still. you know, the pressures that people are under right now when it comes to the cost of living, all of the pressure that public services are under,

gp appointments, you name it. it just feels that there's been a real breakdown in what people should expect from their government and often those people... the labour party as well for ignoring them because you, keir starmer said i know you voted one way, but we're going to ignore that. let's have another vote because you were wrong. we were right, you were wrong. which is an odd thing to do, isn't it? if you've gone home to represent your people and what you actually said is, well, i know 60—odd percent of you voted for leave, but i'm not in favour of it. i never told people they were wrong. that's not the way i approach politics. i could have gone for an easy life, kept my head down. you know, i don't criticise others that took a different approach. i felt it was my responsibility to set out what i felt the impact would be. what matters i think most now is getting that deal to work because jobs are at stake and i think people do recognise that. of course there is still more to do and none of us are complacent about that. when you've lost four elections on the bounce, i think you'd have to be

mad to be complacent about about anything. but we've, you know, we've changed as a party. you've stopped talking about brexit. it annoys some people because what they say is they can now listen to the cbi worrying about brexit. they can read that allegedlyjeremy hunt was toying with the idea of a new relationship with the eu as the new—ish chancellor. but the labour party never wants to talk about it. it's like, don't mention the war. of course we talk about it, you know, keir talked about it at a conference. rachel reeves talks about it. i'm here today talking to you about it. but we have left the european union, whatever we think about that, you know, it's about how we how we look to the future, not refight past arguments. do you worry that the politics around brexit may come back ain? 39 we've just seen the most extraordinary figures for immigration. half a million people. i think we've got to be honest about the fact that immigration has played and will always play an important part of our national story. i wouldn't be sat here today speaking to you, were it not for were it not for migration. my grandparents came to this country, worked in the nhs, made it their home, made it

like so many migrants, made a really important contribution building our country, particularly after the second world war. but of course there is an argument more broadly, i think, about the need to make sure that we are providing people with the skills, the training, the support and actually the workplace conditions that mean that they get a really good quality of life. you confessed earlier, you've always been quite serious. so what do you do to escape? i'm a keen runner. ilike running. i also joined a hockey team just after the pandemic. so i play hockey when i can at a weekend. 0h. are you new to hockey? well, i played when i was at school. i played it until i was 18 and then haven't done it ever since. and just after the pandemic, i thought, you know what, i'm going to try something different and i wish i'd done it years ago. i love it. you're very competitive at hockey? i'm very competitive in sport and in politics. you're about saying everything in everything and everything. you score any goals? last week was a cracker. if i do say something.

really? yeah. yourteam win? we did. we did good. 3—0 win but i am competitive and i'm compared you know and i take that to my politics and i am so determined that labor wins that next election. you say. why do you say that you're competitive? lots of people say the next leader of the labour party will be a woman and they think it might be you. well, all i'm interested in is being the next labor education secretary. i've got a big enough job there, thanks. and if you couldn't have that difficult because so much of your life has been politics from a young age, have you ever thought, "what would i do if all this went?" if i was if i was to walk away tomorrow, i think i'd go and open a book shop. really? yeah. i'd love to run a book shop as long... maybe you know that serve coffee as well. i'd like a nice book shop serving coffee. just do it. i would do something completely different. if i wasn't doing this, i would be doing something totally different. memories of your grandad. ijust, i love reading. it's so important for children,

but itjust brings so much. it brings a richness to your life that you don't have to, you don't have to leave a room, but you can, but you can travel to to another world or another part of the world. and that for me is what education should all be about. bridget phillipson, thanks very much forjoining me on political thinking. thank you. bridget might loathe that word, �*the red wall�*. she�*s undoubtedly right. it�*s overused. it�*s a bit of a cliche, but she knows, and her leader know, that if labor are to get back in power, they have to win the sorts of voters in the sorts of seats around bridget�*s in the north east and therefore talk about some of the issues that labor haven�*t always been comfortable with. crime, immigration and, oh, yes, brexit. thanks for watching. this is the last of the series. we will be back in the new year.

hello there. we should get some sunshine across many parts of the country on sunday but at the moment, we�*ve got milder, wetter, windier weather sweeping down towards the south—east of the uk, and that rain could hang around for a while on sunday as well. some outbreaks of rain affecting east anglia, the south—east, perhaps into hampshire. still a lot of uncertainty about that wet weather. it may ease a bit in the afternoon but there�*s a hang back of cloud through the midlands and towards lincolnshire. other parts of england and wales seeing some sunshine. some showers later coming in off the irish sea. a few showers for northern ireland and in scotland, mainly in the west, but also some sunshine. the winds won�*t be as strong on sunday, still blowy for a while in the north—west of scotland. and it�*s still going to be a mild day as well — temperatures 11 to 13 degrees, just not as mild as it was on saturday, especially for scotland and northern ireland. things are cooling down a bit as we head into next week. whilst not desperately cold, after a very wet november, next week looks like we�*re

in for something a bit drier.

this is bbc news, welcome if you�*re watching here in the uk or around the globe. i�*m monika plaha. our top stories: free up the food aid — venezuela demands that dollars held overseas be spent on humanitarian programmes. a desparate search for survivors after a deadly mudslide on the italian holiday island of ischia. for an end to corruption. the the holiday island of ischia. worry of course is as more holiday island of ischia. worry of course is as more might is might is the worry of course is as more might is cleared, what or who the worry of course is as more might is cleared, what or who will be found underneath. will be found underneath. pakistan�*s former prime minister, imran khan, pakistan�*s former prime minister, imran khan, addresses supporters to call addresses supporters to call

for an end to corruption. and the singer—songwriter and multi—award winning