Bridget Phillipson: Burnham’s past comments on Trump are ‘no bar to having a strong relationship’
Andy Burnham is expected to meet President Trump for the first time in person next week at the UN general assembly in New York. This morning, Sky News host Kamal Ahmed interviewed equalities minister Bridget Phillipson, and pointed to remarks the prime minister had made about the US president before entering government, including a 2021 comment that any UK politician who gave Trump ‘the time of day should be ashamed’, and a suggestion in 2019 that Trump ‘would not be welcome in Manchester’. Ahmed asked whether the meeting would be awkward, and put it to Phillipson that Labour is generally uncomfortable with the president but cannot say so publicly. Phillipson said that was simply politics and that Trump knows it, adding that people express different views at different points and that this is ‘no bar to having a strong relationship’. She said the US relationship matters for intelligence sharing and defence cooperation, including on Ukraine, and that this would be at the forefront of Burnham’s mind.
Bridget Phillipson: Youth unemployment will keep rising ‘for some time’
Kamal Ahmed asked Bridget Phillipson whether the jobless rate among young people was going up or down, two years into the government. Phillipson admitted she imagined it was going up and would continue to do so ‘for some time’, arguing these were ‘long standing challenges’ that predated the pandemic and required early intervention, from a child’s early years through school and into the labour market. Ahmed put it to her that two budgets had raised the cost of employing young people and the cost of regulation, and that businesses were saying they could not take on as many young people as a direct result of government policy. Phillipson said chancellors always have to make decisions about how they raise and spend money, and defended the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions as the right approach in order to invest in the NHS. She noted that employers do not pay national insurance on workers earning under £50,000, and that changes to the employment allowance mean most smaller employers are not paying it. Phillipson said the government would always listen to business, but that it had to strike a balance to fund public services.
Bridget Phillipson: ‘Judge me, and judge this government, by what we deliver’
Kamal Ahmed also spoke to Phillipson about her new taskforce set up to combat misogyny. Ahmed showed her the response of a leading campaigner against violence against women and girls, who had been contacted by the programme but did not wish to be named. The campaigner described the government’s new task force as a ‘nonsense, nothing piece of work’, said Phillipson should have focused on rising rates of abuse and violence among young people, and argued that the initiative ‘won’t shift the dial’. Ahmed also pointed out that the wording of the taskforce is almost identical to the strategy on violence against women and girls announced in 2025, and asked what it would actually do. Phillipson said it was a shame the campaigner had not put their name to the criticism and offered to meet them, adding, ‘judge me, and judge this government by what we deliver’. She cited the government’s approach to child poverty, which she said had brought together campaigners, experts and government to deliver results, as the model. Phillipson said she had run a women’s refuge before entering parliament, pointed to curriculum changes on misogyny, healthy relationships and consent, and said the taskforce would tackle both the violence and ‘the attitudes that lead to the violence’.
Ed Davey: ‘I’m way more popular than them’
At the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, leader Ed Davey has called for a 10p cut to fuel duty, alongside other policies aimed at cutting the cost of living. In a Sky News interview with Davey, Kamal Ahmed argued that the Lib Dems struggle to cut through, sharing polling data which shows that 52 per cent of voters describe the party as weak, and 43 per cent say they are unclear what it stands for. He suggested Davey lacked the impact of the other party leaders. Davey pointed to the party’s best general election result in a long time two years ago, and to local election wins that mean the Liberal Democrats now run more councils than the Conservatives. He said Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be exciting, but they are damaging America and the UK respectively, and said he would rather offer ‘practical, well thought through policies’. Ahmed noted that Davey’s deputy leader had called for the gloves to come off, and asked whether he needed to become more aggressive, like his opponents. Davey said he did not want to be like Polanski or Farage, and disputed Ahmed’s suggestion that he was behind them in the polls, claiming both are unpopular and that he is more popular than either.
Bridget Phillipson: ‘I’m not sure I want to hear too much from a tax exile’
On GB News, Camilla Tominey put it to Bridget Phillipson that there is a ‘central deceit’ in the claim that the welfare bill is being cut by Labour, arguing that Pip payments are set to double by 2030. She suggested the autumn budget would hammer working people while handing money to those who do not work, and referenced Jim Ratcliffe’s recent comments that the UK is ‘on the slide’. Phillipson said she was not sure she wanted to hear much from ‘someone who’s a tax exile’. Tominey countered that high-rate taxpayers are leaving in large numbers, pointing to a reported £350 million in lost tax from Chris Rokos. Phillipson said she understood that people who work hard expect to be rewarded and pointed to measures introduced under Andy Burnham on electricity bills, bus fares and business rate cuts for hospitality as evidence of the government’s direction. She said chancellors always have to strike a balance, and argued that the public finances have been stabilised, with the UK recording the highest growth in the G7 over the last six months. Tominey disputed this, saying that gilt yields are now higher than they were under Liz Truss, and suggested Labour could ‘quite fairly’ be accused of crushing the economy.
Comments