I roundly told her to fuck off .... She fucked off. People said to me they had always wanted to say that to her, and I don’t know why they don’t as t… - Jess Phillips

In the Johnson and [Dominic] Cummings era of government, it was often assumed that anything that happened in Westminster was a group of political geniuses playing 3D chess and laying traps for the Labour Party (or opponents from within the government) to fall in to.
It did sometimes feel true, although it was my experience that it was more by accident than design. I think it might be fair to say that they were playing 2D chess with quite some skill – until they weren't. Liz Truss, it would seem, cannot even play 1D chess. In fact, I am not sure her particular operation could be compared to the shape-sorting toys a one-year-old can master.

[Referring to domestic violence.] It took until the third [statement during the first lockdown] for the prime minister to even mention it. And the first penny that reached the frontline was five months after the crisis started. It’s not for the want of people like me, in the beginning, being like "we should think about this". When Covid-19 was still just a thing in China, we were talking about rising rates of domestic abuse that were being reported by Chinese charities.

All the talk about rebuilding the economy post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-austerity, is always about diggers [...] I mean, do something to make sure everyone gets to play with the digger. What have they done to get more women signed up to digger courses? Make sure I can control a digger.