No animosity with Starmer over Gaza vote, Jess Phillips says

Labour MP Jess Phillips says there is no animosity between her and Sir Keir Starmer after she quit the party front bench over a ceasefire vote on Gaza.

Ms Phillips said on Wednesday that it was with a "heavy heart" that she was leaving her shadow minister role.

"I don't feel like I am rebelling against the Labour Party, I feel like I am taking a position with my heart my head and my constituents," she said.

But Ms Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, said there had been a "huge outpouring of grief and pain" from her constituents about the ongoing situation in Israel and Gaza.

"I don't feel that the current military action is doing anything to secure a stable future in the Middle East," she said.

She said she understood Sir Keir and Labour's position but said she did not see where current action "ends in a safer [and] securer Israel and Palestine".

"Newborn babies in incubators are not a threat, and the cost of their lives because there is no fuel getting into Gaza, is just not something I can sit with," she told BBC Radio WM.

"No one is suggesting that Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself - I am suggesting that it has to be completely and utterly proportionally targeted and protects peace in the future."

MP for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana had also voted for a ceasefire.

"There is nothing humanitarian about letting children eat a little today, only to bomb them tomorrow," she said.

"The only humanitarian way forward is an immediate ceasefire."