There are some statesmen and stateswomen who make each word they say or write count. Some of these politicians are thoughtful to the point of being taciturn and don’t speak until they are completely sure that what they say is intelligent, relevant and will not leave any hostages to political fortune. Then there is Jess Phillips MP, who is the complete opposite of thoughtful taciturnity. A politician who seemingly cannot abide being in a room with another person and not opening her mouth. What’s worse is that Ms Phillips gives the impression that she doesn’t think before engaging the mouth muscles.

Jess Phillips will voice whatever pops into her mind and it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s wrong or stupid or uninformed or laughable. Whether it is thoughtlessly defending (see 3:50+ on video) a set of questionable primary school sex educational materials to Muslim parents who objected to this material, or laughing at an MP speaking in a Commons committee about male health challenges and high male suicide rates, you can almost guarantee that Jess Phillips will say something that could easily come into the category of ‘WTF!’ It was Ms Phillips, some may remember, who in 2019 came up with a frankly laughable excuse for high office costs following some questions about her Parliamentary expenses. She implied that she couldn’t afford a printer and had travel to her mother-in-law’s home to print things out.

Now Jess Phillips’s unfiltered mouth has created yet another scandal and yet another news story. This time it is one that feeds into the zeitgeist of modern British times about two tier governance and policing. According to an article by Stephanie Takyi in the Daily Mail of 29^th of August 2024, Ms Phillips is claimed to have said that she received preferential treatment in an NHS hospital from Muslim staff because of her position as one of those who voted in the Commons for a ‘Gaza ceasefire’.

Ms Takyi said:

The moniker ‘Two-Tier Keir’ already trips off many tongues. But will its usage in everyday speech now become irreversible?

I ask because of a remarkable disclosure by one of Sir Keir Starmer‘s government ministers – Jess Phillips, loquacious Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley.

Speaking at an event unambiguously billed as An Evening With Jess Phillips, held at Kiln Theatre in North London, Phillips recounted an episode from her personal medical history which suggests that it may not just be policing which could be guided by a ‘two-tier’ approach but also, perhaps, treatment dispensed by the National Health Service.

Ms Takyi wrote that Ms Phillips had allegedly suffered a quite distressing eruption of a breathing difficulty that Ms Phillips was said to have described as one that had ‘turned her lips blue’. Because of this incident, she went to get treatment at a Birmingham hospital. After describing the facilities at A and E as ‘like something from the developing world’ Ms Takyi then claimed that Ms Phillips got to the front of the queue for what would be, if proven true, remarkable and worrying reasons.

Of the reason Ms Phillips apparently advanced swiftly to the head of the queue, Ms Takyi continued:

But this, she said, was ‘undoubtedly’ for two reasons only. ‘I got through because of who I am. Also the doctor who saw me was Palestinian, as it turns out. Almost all the doctors in Birmingham seemed to be.’

While in opposition, Phillips resigned from Labour’s front bench to vote in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza five weeks after Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis – many of whom were mutilated or raped – and took another 120 hostage.

Her vote, she said, was the other reason that she received preferential treatment.

‘He was sort of like, “I like you. You voted for a ceasefire”. [Because of that] I got through quicker.’

If true this claim is utterly astonishing. If the reporting is correct, then here we have a clear example of people being treated differently in NHS facilities depending on the patient’s point of view or their willingness to support Hamas-friendly policies such as the ‘Gaza ceasefire’ one. As for the claim that it was a ‘Palestinian’ doctor, presumably a Muslim one who bumped her up the waiting list, then this could indicate that at least some Muslim doctors will bend the rules to support a supporter of an Islamist cause. Both of these allegations are very serious ones. The allegations that some Muslim doctors are bent towards Islamic and maybe Islamist causes and that treatment can be prioritised for those who buy into the Hamas Gaza War narrative, should be independently investigated.

These allegations need to be investigated because they hit at the heart of the concepts of impartiality and fairness. They open up questions about whether people are being equally served or are they being treated or being given access to public resources such as housing, benefits and much more, on subjective and maybe sectarian grounds?

The lawyer Stephen Barratt writing on X (formerly Twitter) said:

So … if I say ‘the right things’,

I get:

– preferential healthcare in emergency situations

– better access to public paid jobs

– immunity from laws

– freedom to act as I choose

Are people picking politics based on self-interest? Is that fair?

Mr Barratt is correct to ask this. It’s not by any logical reason ‘fair’ and looks very much like preference or otherwise on the grounds of political and religious sectarianism, something that Britain didn’t used to have on its Mainland.

These are serious allegations that require being looked into and maybe to find out if there are any other well evidenced examples of religious or political preference in the NHS for starters. However I’d also like to know whether this really happened in the way that Ms Takyi is claiming that Ms Phillips said it did, whether it’s misreporting or a misheard statement or whether Ms Phillips has got it all wrong and just regurgitated that wrong viewpoint back out again? In other words, this could be real or it could be bullshit?

Yet again Jess Phillips has opened her mouth and with it she has also opened a massive can of worms. She has opened up the debate about public concerns about the fairness of the institutions that administer the state and its functions and about fairness of allocation of access to public resources. If the words that Ms Phillips are reported to have said are correct, then concepts like ‘fairness’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘equal treatment’ might be in a very bad way in the National Health Service, as well as in some of Britain’s police forces and possibly in a great many other agencies of the state.

This claim does need to be looked into, and looked into in depth, as everyone who relies on the State for some service or other, whether that be policing, education, healthcare, social care or whatever, needs to be confident that the services are being provided to everyone equally. If they are not, then Britain has a serious sectarianism problem.

I suppose that on this occasion we should be grateful for Ms Phillips’s desperate fishwife tendency to ‘shout her brains’ out on everything and anything in the manner of a Gatling gun loaded with shotgun shells. If she has spoken the words that are being attributed to her, then she’s thrown a massive political hand grenade into her own government, a government that is getting more and more associated with two tier governance. If a politician wanted to go politically off piste, then Ms Phillips has chosen a spectacular way to do so.