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Jess Phillips is cracking company. Warm, funny and disarmingly open. As we fiddle with our recording devices she jokes in her rich, deep, Brummie tones that when she was interviewing people for her book, her transcribing app could work out any accent apart from Rochdale.

Her critics on the hard-Left attack her as being too Right-wing for the Labour Party compared to Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner. So they may be shocked to learn that she shared a flat with them for a few weeks in 2015 just after they were all first elected to Parliament and she had nowhere to stay. Who did the washing up? “I don’t remember anyone doing the washing up. But that’s largely because we never ate there. It was a tidy house. Angela had a lot of shoes.”

One of her fondest memories is the three of them getting ready and leaving the house dressed up like “three girls going on a night out but we were actually going to Parliament”.

Phillips is often caricatured as being to the right of Genghis Khan. She snorts with laughter, “I felt like it’s The Crucible and I’m Goody Proctor.”

I am Left-wing. I am a socialist... There’s no two ways about it Jess Phillips

She finds the accusation incredible, saying: “I am Left-wing. I am a socialist. I believe in sharing wealth. There’s no two ways about it.” These divisive labels clearly frustrate her. “Genuinely, I don’t know anyone who’s a Right-winger in the Labour Party.”

Her pitch to the party is that she will put an end to factionalism and bring it together, but we remind her she was one of the most vocal critics of Jeremy Corbyn, and famously told Diane Abbott to eff off.

“I’ve had disagreements with literally every wing of the party,” she says, denying she is factional herself but acknowledging she has three months to make a pitch to members, many of whom voted for Corbyn twice.

She refuses to give Corbyn a score out of ten but says: “I’ve made my views clear.” She also says even though he was a major reason why they lost the election, “it’s time to draw a line under it and move on”. And she campaigned with many brilliant young Momentum activists during the election who were “top bantz”.

She says she has little disagreement with Corbyn on domestic policy and only broke the whip twice on staying in the single market and against a tax cut for those earning more than £50k. But there needs to be a sense of priority: “I don’t think you can sell to the country, ‘You can have everything’. And you know what, I don’t think the country wants to hear it, either.”

Phillips takes a different approach on international affairs. She is ardently pro-European and, while she doesn’t think there would ever be a need to use nuclear weapons, she would be prepared to press the button.

Her domestic priorities are shaped by experiences close to home — education and homelessness.

Earlier this summer, she left her son outside Downing Street as part of a demonstration against funding cuts which forced schools to adopt a four-and-a-half-day week. Homelessness is another touchstone issue for her. It’s the biggest issue in her constituency and she ran a homelessness service for ten years, before she got into politics, where she helped house the victims of domestic violence and trafficking.

The issue is more than political for Phillips, it’s personal. Her older brother Luke was a heroin addict with severe mental health issues who ended up sleeping rough. She recalls how hard it was. “You didn’t see him. You didn’t know if he was sleeping on someone’s floor or if he was safe.

“It’s incredibly hard for families with people with complex and complicated needs because there’s not the same level of sympathy there. I used to worry that he would turn up at work and things. It was horrible. There were years where you just live in fear.”

It was hard for her with two young children at the time but she felt worse for her parents: “It was much harder to watch my mum and dad having to deal with it, to feel their pain and be unable to do anything about it.”

Thankfully, Luke has been “solidly good” for two years, has kids, has a job and is back at university studying politics. The relief is palpable.

She is evidently passionate about the value of the state, particularly for people at the margins of society, and believes that Labour should be anti-austerity and still be fiscally responsible. “Those two things are not mutually exclusive.”

When it comes to trade unions, a Labour Party under Phillips would not look that different.

I’ve never bent the knee to anyone in my life Jess Phillips

They are a “vital asset” and she believes there are “huge possibilities and there are masses that needs to be done to grow them”. But she is keen to see more women leaders and praises TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady as “a bloody breath of fresh air”. Asked if she would bend the knee to Len McCluskey of Unite, the powerful trade union, she responds sharply. “I’ve never bent the knee to anyone in my life” and says she won’t bow to any “baron, whether they’re a real baron, or a union or press one”.

One thing which she says will change if she becomes leader is the approach to anti-Semitism.

“The Labour Party has lost the right to handle this itself any more. It needs a completely clean slate and we need to listen to what our Jewish community and affiliates are telling us, and that is there needs to be a completely independent process.”

She is also robust in her view that the senior advisers at Labour HQ, including ​Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy, must go. “I don’t see how we can turn the page on this episode without that happening.”

Phillips also pulls no punches on her views about the Prime Minister. When paying tribute to the former Speaker John Bercow in the Chamber, she brought the house down by quipping: “While you have a responsibility to Parliament, I know you take your responsibilities as a parent incredibly seriously… and now to the Prime Minister.”

What does she think of him as a man? “I don’t think he is a very moral man. When I was a kid we saw lots of sex scandals, sleaze and sexuality, they were partly what took down [John] Major’s government. You know I am not one who thinks it should have anything to do with the politics of this building, but it speaks to his character. I mean, just not being able to say how many children you have. As a woman, I really remember those kids being born — it hurt!”

As a woman, I don’t trust Boris Johnson with my rights Jess Phillips

She says she could draw a line under Boris Johnson’s morality if she didn’t worry it would affect him as Prime Minister. “As a woman, I don’t trust Boris Johnson with my rights and that’s largely because of the things that he has said and done in his political life. I can’t help but think, ‘You can’t lie to your family; how could I ever trust you?’”

Phillips was raised as a staunch republican, and married one, but has grown to respect the Queen and her public service even though she hasn’t watched The Crown. She is sympathetic to the subjects of the big news story of the day — the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to step back as senior royals. She’s an admirer of Meghan Markle from the show Suits, and because she was an activist. She said the decision “made me feel sad as she made me feel hopeful”.

One reason why she has some empathy for Markle is because of the abuse Phillips is no stranger to.

As one of the most high-profile and outspoken female politicians in the UK, she gets a torrent of abuse online and in person. “During the election, I had to give police statements what seemed near-daily. It is very tiring to be a victim, it takes quite a lot of work. It’s hours of your time searching for evidence on the internet. And that took quite a toll on me.”

She thinks it would be “helpful” for her to see a therapist and says many have been in touch.

It’s another thing on her to-do list, she jokes, like getting her cracked phone screen fixed. But she drops her trademark humour and is visibly upset when she tells us that it has affected her children.

She was close to tears when her son Danny told her he had a safety plan if something ever happened when they were out together. “He said, ‘I need to stand with my back to the wall near a door so I can escape if something bad happens, because that’s what you said.’ When the counter-terrorism police come around to your house to take statements, I suppose that does sink in when you’re 10 years old.”

If this contest was decided on the basis of who you would like to go down the pub with, there is no doubt Phillips would win with a landslide, but she knows that while she has many fans beyond the party, she has her work cut out for her over the next three months to win the trust of members. But she’s ready for the challenge. When asked about her favourite Labour leader, it is Neil Kinnock she chooses — the firebrand who called out Militant and put Labour back on the path to power.

How apt, because if the party is to hear home truths, Phillips is up for the fight.