Alexandra Phillips | |
---|---|
Born | Alexandra Lesley Phillips 26 December 1983 Gloucester, England |
Education | Denmark Road High School Sir Thomas Rich's School |
Alma mater | Durham University Cardiff University |
Occupations |
|
Notable work | GB News
|
Political party | Reform (since 2023) None (2021–2023) Brexit (2019–2020) Conservative (2016–2019) UKIP (before 2016) |
Member of the European Parliament for South East England | |
In office 2 July 2019 –31 January 2020 | |
Preceded by | Diane James |
Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
Alexandra Lesley Phillips (born 26 December 1983) is a British journalist and former politician. She served as a Brexit Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South East England constituency from 2019 to 2020. She was the second candidate on the party's list for the constituency after party leader Nigel Farage. [1] Phillips was previously head of media at the UK Independence Party (UKIP),which she left in September 2016. She was a GB News presenter between June 2021 and September 2022. In February 2023,Phillips joined Reform UK.
Alexandra Lesley Phillips was born on 26 December 1983 in Gloucester. [2] She has an older brother. Her early education was at the grammar schools Denmark Road High School,and Sir Thomas Rich's School in Gloucester. She studied English literature and philosophy at St. Mary's College,Durham University,and broadcast journalism at Cardiff University. [3] [4] [5]
Phillips made a film about the UK Independence Party (UKIP) as a student journalist while covering the 2007 National Assembly for Wales election. She reported that this experience was an important factor in her later joining the party as she was enthralled by then leader Nigel Farage's personality,and supported the party's positions on the expansion of grammar schools,supporting fracking,and Euroscepticism. [6] Prior to joining UKIP,Phillips had worked as a local journalist for ITV,and later BBC Wales. [5]
Phillips worked as UKIP's head of media for three years. [6] Soon after the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum in which she voted for Brexit,she left UKIP,at around the same time as Farage,and in September joined the Conservatives,a few weeks after Theresa May had been elected as leader. [6] She stayed on as a media advisor to Nathan Gill,a UKIP MEP and Welsh Assembly member who had become an independent in the Assembly after being beaten by Neil Hamilton for the position of group leader there. [7] She explained her reasons for joining the Conservative Party as her admiration for then Prime Minister Theresa May's positions on Brexit,grammar schools,fracking,and the infighting within UKIP. [8]
In May 2019,Phillips was announced as the Brexit Party's candidate for the South East England constituency in the European parliamentary election. A Green Party candidate also called Alexandra Phillips ran in the same constituency. [9] Both were elected in the election. [10] On 30 May 2019,less than a week after the election,Phillips appeared on the panel of the BBC's weekly Question Time . [11] In July of the same year,Phillips admitted to working for SCL Group,the parent company of Cambridge Analytica,on Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's successful 2017 re-election campaign. She had previously denied working for Cambridge Analytica,but said the work she did was sub-contracted out by SCL. [12] [13] Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that closed in 2018 after being found to have harvested millions of Facebook users' data without their consent for political advertising. [14] In the European Parliament,Phillips was a member of the Committee on Development,and was part of the delegation for relations with South Africa. [2]
On 2 August 2019,Phillips was selected as the Brexit Party's prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for Southampton Itchen. [15] However,on 11 November 2019,the Brexit Party announced that it would not stand in incumbent Conservative seats. [16] The following day,Phillips announced that she would not be voting in the general election as she had been "disenfranchised" by her party. [17] Her term as MEP ended in January 2020 when the UK withdrew from the EU. [18] In February 2023,she joined Reform UK (successor to the Brexit Party) as a policy adviser to party leader Richard Tice. [19]
Phillips presented a twice-weekly show on talkRADIO and is a contributor to The Daily Telegraph . [20] She co-hosted an afternoon programme on GB News with Simon McCoy between June and August 2021. [21] [22] After McCoy moved to the breakfast show,she was given her own show,The Afternoon Agenda,in August 2021. [23] She left GB News in September 2022 after her show was cancelled. [24] In July 2023 Alex began presenting a Saturday afternoon programme on TalkTV.
The UK Independence Party is a Eurosceptic,right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s,when it gained two members of parliament and was the largest party representing the UK in the European Parliament. The party is currently led by Neil Hamilton.
Nigel Paul Farage is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021. Farage is currently the Honorary President of Reform UK and a presenter for GB News. He served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union in 2020.
Gerard Joseph Batten is a British politician who served as the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2018 to 2019. He was a founding member of the party in 1993,and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London from 2004 to 2019.
The 2014 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election,held on Thursday 22 May 2014,coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England and Northern Ireland. In total,73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England,Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR,while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).
Margaret Lucille Jeanne Parker is a British former politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands region between 2014 and 2019.
Diane Martine James is a British politician who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 2014 to 2019. She was briefly leader-elect of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from September 2016 to October 2016,but resigned before formalising her leadership. At the time of her election to the European Parliament,James was one of three UKIP MEPs for South East England,before joining the Brexit Party in 2019.
Janice Ann Atkinson is a former British politician who was a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region. She formerly represented the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and later sat as an independent:she was elected in 2014,second on the list for the region behind Nigel Farage. In March 2015,she was expelled from UKIP for "bringing the party into disrepute" after her chief of staff was recorded trying to fraudulently inflate her expenses.
Louise Bours,also known as Louise van de Bours,is a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North West England region. She was elected in 2014 as a UK Independence Party candidate but resigned from the party 2018,and sat as an independent until she stood down at the 2019 election.
Nathan Lee Gill is a British politician,who was the Leader of Reform UK Wales from March to May 2021,when he resigned from the party. He previously served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wales from 2014 to January 2020.
William Milroy Etheridge is an English politician who was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands region. He was elected in 2014 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate,but left the party in October 2018 and joined the Libertarian Party. He joined the Brexit Party in 2019 but rejoined UKIP in September 2020.
David Adam Coburn is a Scottish politician and businessman who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Scotland from 2014 to 2019. A former member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP),Coburn was the leader of UKIP Scotland from July 2014 until December 2018.
Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy was a Eurosceptic and populist political group in the European Parliament. The EFDD group was a continuation for the Eighth European Parliament of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group that existed during the Seventh European Parliament,with significant changes to group membership.
The 2019 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2019 European Parliament election,held on Thursday 23 May 2019 and the results were announced on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May 2019,after all the other EU countries had voted. This was the United Kingdom's final participation in a European Parliament election before leaving the European Union on 31 January 2020,and was also the last election to be held under the provisions of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 before its repeal under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
Caroline Yvonne Jones is a Welsh politician who was a Member of the Senedd (MS) for South Wales West from 2016 to 2021.
The September 2016 UK Independence Party leadership election was triggered after Nigel Farage,the leader of the UK Independence Party,announced on 4 July 2016,following the Leave result in the UK referendum on EU membership,that he would step down when a new leader had been elected.
A by-election for the House of Commons constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire,England,was held on 8 December 2016. It was triggered by the resignation of the Conservative member of parliament (MP) Stephen Phillips,who left Parliament on 4 November 2016 due to policy differences with the Conservative government led by the prime minister,Theresa May,over Brexit –the British withdrawal from the European Union (EU). The Conservatives nominated Caroline Johnson,a paediatrician,to replace Phillips;she won the by-election with more than 50 per cent of the vote,a sizable majority. The Conservatives' vote share fell slightly compared to the result at the previous general election in 2015.
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party,advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit and was a significant political force in 2019. After Brexit,it was renamed to Reform UK in January 2021,and became primarily an anti-lockdown party during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently,in December 2022,it began campaigning on broader right-wing populist themes during the British cost-of-living crisis. As the Brexit Party,it gained 29 seats and the largest share of the national vote in the 2019 European Parliament election.
Michael Eric Heaver is a British former politician. He was elected as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East of England constituency in the 2019 European parliamentary election a role he remained in until the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU. Previously,he was the chair of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)'s youth wing,Young Independence.
The 2019 European Parliament election for the election of the delegation from the United Kingdom was held on 23 May 2019. These were the last elections to the European Parliament to be held before Brexit.