Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips starts at 8:30am on Sky News on September 3rd. Photo: Jeff Pugh
Sir Trevor Phillips is in trouble. great chatty mood. We discuss how being a former Labor Party politician might affect his impartiality in his new role as host of the Sky News political show, and it quickly becomes clear that this won't be an issue – everyone in the parliamentary lobby seems to hate him.< /p>
“These people are not my friends,” he begins, settling gaily in the noisy and no-nonsense back office of Sky News headquarters. “They don't really like it when someone who isn't one of them comes in and stands out.
“I'll be perfectly cordial, polite and interested in people, but I don't need their approval. You cannot be a member of the club.
Raised in British Guiana (now Guyana), Wood Green in north London and a graduate of Imperial College, it is clear that Phillips is not a member of the club. He jokingly calls his career “his long and unfortunate history”: during his tenure as chairman of the London Assembly in the early 2000s, there were quarrels with Ken Livingstone over multiculturalism, during which Phillips championed the virtues of integration, not separatism, lest we “slept in segregation”.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, he was briefly suspended from the party over accusations of Islamophobia in 2020 after calling British Muslims “a nation within a nation” (the suspension, according to Phillips, was simply retribution for saying he didn't can support the Labor Party's tolerance for anti-Semitism).
Phillips is a rare person: a politician on the left who doesn't make the right spit coffee . Photo: David Parry/Eyevine
In between, he chaired the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for five years. , who was haunted by rumors of dissent and departure.
Phillips, 69, is a rare individual: a left-wing politician who doesn't make the right spit coffee out. And when it comes to elections next year, he predicts that “the Tories may win, but they will win despite the Conservative Party. The Labor Party may win, but it will win despite its leader.”
His first show will air this Sunday, succeeding Sophie Ridge. His interview style is more subtle than interviewers of the past – he doesn't want it to be just a “duel between guys”.
“I don’t think anyone is interested in seeing alpha males these days. pull it out to see who is the smartest. They want to know what will happen to my mortgage.”
Phillips, the youngest of ten children, was born in London to British parents from Guiana. Photo: Graham Jepson
However, Jeremy Paxman is my friend. “I love him to bits… but I think one of the worst things that happens in political interviews is the popularization of the idea, ‘Why is this lying bastard lying to me? He says that every politician featured on his show will “get it right.”
“The bottom line of all politics is this. It's always a matter of choice. And the essence of choice is that it is never between good and bad. It's always between bad and worse. My job is to get the decision maker to be honest about his choices.”
Phillips knows a thing or two about hard decisions. He was at the peak of his managerial career: before heading the London Assembly, he was a producer at London Weekend Television.
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Would he expand Ulez? Although he gave up his car, he says he won't. “It doesn't seem to me that the likely impact is large enough to offset the impact on ordinary workers.”
Then came his leadership of the ECHR: one of the most difficult decisions he had to make. The decision, he said, was to shut down adoption agencies that didn't accept same-sex couples… a decision that also had racial implications.
“The community I come from would fully support the idea that same-sex couples should not have children. This was a very unpopular position among the minorities. But there are LGBT people who say: “And we?” I chose the side of equality, not my tribe.”
He believes that many believed that the ECHR should be just a state. a sponsored pressure group whose job it was to complain. But Phillips also wanted to solve problems. “When you're serious about politics, there will always be people who don't like you.”
Perhaps he still fits in: ironically, all this struggle has led to sympathy for those who raised their heads above the parapet … even in politics. He is definitely not inclined towards naive binary idealism.
“People who make fun of politicians are usually people who have never made decisions that are more important than what color socks to wear today,” he says. “I think that all this skepticism around politicians is wrong. Most of them try to do their best. Some of them are not very good at it.
Sir Trevor Phillips: “People who mock politicians are usually people who never accepted decisions are more important than what color socks to wear today.” Photo: Jeff Pugh
“Some of them may not be very brave. Some of them are completely crazy. But almost all serious people do what they do because they believe it's the right thing to do, not purely out of ego.
“I think there is a prejudice against authority. There is an opinion that anyone who is actually in charge somewhere is just a bad guy. And I really hate it. This is bad for democracy.”
Phillips has long been a flag bearer for free speech. He supported Toby Young's Free Speech Alliance and criticized the left for their insidious war on him. Take, for example, the toxic transgender debate: “It would have been a good idea when the whole JK Rowling thing started [when she was suspended because of her views on transgender rights], instead of people saying, 'Oh, well, you know, we are.” We need balance and all that,” they said, “you might not like what J.K. Rowling said. And if you don't like it, you can argue.”
Phillips's comments about race have of course also generated a lot of controversy: so are we still dreaming of segregation?
“I don't think we're as dumb as we were in 2005 when I said that. I still believe that we as a country are not putting as much emphasis on promoting the integration process as we could.
London lost about 600,000 young white people on the eve of the last census. It has become more of a minority. And even in London minority groups mixed, but they mixed with each other.
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“I think there is complacency about how well our version of multiculturalism works. Head to the city in the northwest, Burnley, Preston or Leicester, and you will find that the people are great at what they do. But at 17.00 they again take to the streets, where everyone who lives there is the same people as themselves. None of this is a crime. But this is not without consequences.”
Phillips, the youngest of ten children, was born in London to British Guiana parents (his father was a railroad worker and his mother a seamstress) who emigrated in 1950, two years later. after the first wave of immigrants sailed from the West Indies to London on the HMT Empire Windrush. In 1998, he and his brother Michael wrote Windrush: 75 Years of Modern Britain.
He believes that immigration remains a big political issue. “Now we are starting to treat all immigrants as if they are a single mass: asylum seekers, people who came legally, people who came here for family reunification, and people who, in essence, just cheat the system. We need to find out who the illegal immigrants are – now we're talking about over a million people – it takes very little effort because it actually benefits quite a lot of people.
“Secondly, if you find illegal immigrants, they should be treated fairly. Most migrant people hold this view, because most of us have come this way the hard way.
“My aunt, who raised me in British Guiana, who, like my parents, is the most important person in the world to me, could not come to my wedding because we were not going to cheat the system and somehow lure her here.< /p>
“I think it's reasonable that these people are outraged that people who are young, able-bodied and wealthy, if you pay to cross the English Channel, can cheat the system.”
Turning to his show, he hopes to invite as a guest his friend, the writer Salman Rushdie, who was recently attacked by an alleged Iranian sympathizer. “If you're going to talk about what the government should do about free speech, there's probably no one in the world more qualified to talk about it,” says Phillips.
Also on the wish list? Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, so that viewers can properly understand the cost of the crisis.
He will also speak about mental health, especially with young people, which has a deeply personal resonance: in 2021, Phillips lost his 36-year-old daughter Sushila to anorexia.
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“There is no day so that I don't think about her. Also, in many ways, she was my collaborator, and actually being on the show kind of wakes me up. She left an imprint on all of us.”
Phillips has another daughter, Holly, from his first marriage to Asha Bhunagari, a child psychotherapist. He is currently married to Helen Veal, a television producer.
His daughters, he says, did “the hardest thing any leader or public figure could ever hear.” They could tell me, “Yes, that's a really good idea.” But you know what? Someone else could get away with it, but you can't.”
Sir Trevor Phillips with his daughter Susheela: “Not a day goes by that I don't think about her” Photo: Nigel Howard/Shutterstock
You have to really trust someone not to ask, “What are you talking about?” So I miss Sushila. I miss her so much.”
He turns 70 in December, and it seems like the perfect way to spend his semi-retirement period. Is this a more decent option instead of “Strictly”?
“Ha ha! To be honest, they just chalked it up to drugs. everything is fine,” he laughs. “Kim Kardashian and I talk all the time!”
Sunday morning with Trevor Phillips starts at 8:30am on Sky News on September 3rd
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