Russell Brand, David Walliams and the legacy of MeToo

Emily Maitlis (0:02)

This is a Global Production. This has been the week which has shaken the British entertainment industry. It's a week where some of the most well-known faces in British entertainment have either gone to prison for rape or been accused of sexual predation. It's the sort of week where you need to sit back and take stock. Ask how this might have come to be. Ask whether anything has really changed. There could be no better person to do that with than Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham, Yardley and also previously safeguarding minister in the Keir Starmer government. She has dedicated her life, not just politically but professionally before that, to the fight against the scourge of violence against women and girls. So she stepped in to the News Agents studio to ask, in this week, of all weeks, can we comfort ourselves that anything about British society, about the centres of British power have really shifted? Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents.

Well, Jess, Jess Phillips, thanks so much for joining us. I know in a way you get called upon because of your expertise and that you were the safeguarding minister to talk about this stuff. I know that you find it in many senses deeply depressing that that's the case.

Jess Phillips (1:31)

Yeah.

Emily Maitlis (1:33)

But it happens so often, right? Here we are again. I mean, now we're at the end of the week and these stories clearly have got much further to go. Who knows? There may be other stories to come as well.

What are your reflections?

Jess Phillips (1:43)

I feel really tired. Look, I'm doing all the things that I do. Whenever, I hate to refer to this as opportunity because it's so awful. The stories are so awful.

I learnt long ago never to waste a crisis. So I've spent this week linking up different campaigns with secretaries of state and making sure that balls are rolling and people are worried and people are looking into their systems and things. So I have been doing that as much as I normally would. But actually, fundamentally, this one, this iteration of the Me Too, the Sarah Everard, the big moments where women all vent and say, this is what has been happening to us. I found it incredibly tiring, actually. I found it, yeah, just a little bit, like here again.

Emily Maitlis (2:48)

I was literally about to say, there's something quite repetitive about it, like monotonous about it. That's a weird thing to say, or weird adjectives to use, because these things are obviously of such gravity, of such seriousness, but they recur. I just feel like, even in my time in journalism, these conversations recur and the stories come.

It's a bit like whenever there's a crisis, and what's the thing a minister's role that say, well, lessons will be learned.

Jess Phillips (3:14)

Yeah, exactly. Lessons will be learned should be scrapped from, like you shouldn't be allowed to say it. Enough is enough, is the other one. Enough is enough.

Then I have to sit back and properly try and reflect about what has changed. Now, the cases from this week, so Russell Brand and David Walliams, in both these cases, you are talking about relatively historic issues. So I have to say, could this happen now? Now, of course, the answer is yes, this could happen now. But has it improved, have things improved from then, from the historic, so 2009 is the first instance in what Russell Brand was charged with, have things changed? And the answer is yes, but they are slow and they are iterative, and it requires the bloodletting every couple of years, and the work of women literally have to go onto the streets and bleed. Like so many times, if you try and get one of these stories across the line, as you will know, and often I have turned to journalism where all of the systems have failed. You know, it is genuinely the good backstop for these stories.

But like so often, they say we can only get the story across the line if she will speak publicly, even anonymously, but if she will go and... And it is so hard to get people into that position. What do you think?

Emily Maitlis (4:47)

You said, compared to Brand in 2009, you said that things have changed, albeit it is iterative. What do you think it has changed?

Jess Phillips (4:54)

What is different? I think in the mainstream, and I stress in the mainstream, the kind of pattern... We're now all seeing these clips on social media, aren't we? Of years gone by and terrible incidences of both Brand and Walliams having jokes, lol made about them being either gropey or underage or girls or whatever it is.