Voters want Labour to deliver change after election ‘kicking’, says Education Secretary

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said that the local election results delivered a message from voters to the government to get on with delivering the change that was promised at the general election.

She said on The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “We had a really devastating set of election results, we got a real kicking, and there’s no hiding from that. The Prime Minister is upfront about that. He takes responsibility for those results, as do we all.

“This is not just about one individual. This is about our failure to tell the story of the change that we’re bringing that people voted for in 2024, and there is a big job of work ahead of us.

“I’m in no doubt about the scale of the challenge ahead of us. We had a really devastating set of results in Sunderland. We lost some really good people who’d served their community for many years and had made an enormous difference, and they lost out because of the national position, and that is a responsibility on all of us.

“It’s a responsibility that I share. I’m in government, I’m a member of the Cabinet, and I take responsibility for that as well as the Prime Minister.

“And I think the message that I heard from voters is that they voted for change in 2024 and there’s a real sense of disappointment amongst voters that they don’t feel that change has materialised in the way that they wanted. Now that takes different forms. A lot of that concern is around things like social housing, about crime, about getting more police on the streets, about the fact that waiting lists in the NHS haven’t come down as fast as we would like.

“Alongside that, we are doing some fantastic things in government that I am really proud of, but we don’t get to be heard on those things unless we level with people about where we are at the moment. This is a five-year parliamentary term. We’re not even two years in, and we do have the chance to turn it around, but that is on us to do that and I’m not going to hide from that.”

She defended Sir Keir Starmer’s appointment of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman: “Both Harriet and Gordon Brown have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise to offer. But this isn’t the only area where we’re going to do more.

“Just next week coming up, we’ve got the King’s Speech in Parliament and we’ll be setting out a very big and bold and ambitious agenda for the change that our country voted for in 2024 and where they want to see action. I totally, totally understand that. I think the fact that we secured such a big election win in 2024 off the back of such a devastating result in 2019, I think, shows how politics has changed.”

On potential candidates to replace the Prime Minister, she said: “The last thing that we need at the minute is the Labour Party spending months talking amongst ourselves, potentially fighting amongst ourselves, at a point which I don’t take the message from the British people to be spend more time doing that.”

She added: “It is the Prime Minister’s responsibility, but it is a shared responsibility. To that point about what we are seeking to achieve as a party in government, we spent many, many years in opposition, and I saw things getting worse for the people that I represent, fewer people being able to get on the housing ladder, kids growing up in poverty, people struggling every day.

“Life is just really hard, and everybody should be able to enjoy the chance to go on holiday once a year, the chance to get a new car. People just feeling that politics was entirely disconnected from their lives and wasn’t delivering. We’ve had years of that, but people know that, and I’m not coming on here to say, look, we got a terrible legacy.

“We did but I think the voters have banked that, and what they want to see from us is a sense of optimism that the country is moving in the right direction. We will deliver on the change that they want to see, particularly on the cost of living, where it is really clear, when I knock on doors in Sunderland and across the country, that lots of people are really struggling.

“They work hard, they do the right thing, and they don’t feel they’re getting the rewards of it. That is what we’ve got to change.”

On the MP Catherine West positioning herself as a leadership challenger, she said: “Catherine West and her approach – I fundamentally disagree. Catherine is a good colleague and we get on very, very well, but I think it’s just wrong.

“On this point, I don’t take the message from the elections, from voters as being spend more time talking amongst yourselves as a Labour Party and spend months in a leadership contest with all the chaos that would ensue.

“That wasn’t the message I heard from voters and on this point. About our relationship with the European Union, look, the country voted to leave in 2016 that was the choice the British people made.”