JESS Phillips has dropped out of the Labour leadership race after admitting she can’t “unite the party”.
The outspoken MP had been a huge critic of Jeremy Corbyn, and had little to no chance of making it onto the ballot.
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The Birmingham Yardley MP revealed she was standing down in an emotional video less than three weeks after announcing plans to run.
It comes after the leadership hopeful failed to win the support of a single union.
She said: “The Labour Party will need to select a candidate who can unite all parts of our movement, the union movement, members and elected representatives.
“And I have to also be honest with myself, as I said I always would be throughout this campaign.
“At this time, that person is not me.
“In order to win the country, we are going to have to find a candidate, in this race, who can do all of that, and then take that message out to the country.
“A message of hope and change, that things can be better.”
Leadership rivals were quick to offer her support, with Lisa Nandy saying she would “miss her in the contest”.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said she was “very sorry” to see her drop out as Labour needed to “broaden our debate, not narrow it”.
Ms Phillips quit just hours after claiming immigration figures were not too high.
The prominent backbencher made the appeal in a pro immigration piece in the Independent.
She said: “Why, when we’re asked whether immigration is too high, do Labour politicians so often fumble their response? Let’s say what we think: no, it isn’t.”
“In an attempt to sound tough, Labour has sometimes been too slow to stand up against this kind of rhetoric and, in the worst cases, even been seen to appease it.
“In a battle that’s become too much about ‘the numbers’, we’ve forgotten that, at its core, immigration is about people – people who fall in love, create families, build better lives for themselves and make our communities the vibrant places they are.”
The unlikely contender called for Labour to “bust” the idea that “that working-class communities are hostile to immigration”.
She claimed it only leads to “political arm-wrestling between the left and right over who can sound the toughest on immigration.”
The most recent Office for National Statistics figures revealed EU net migration to the UK had fallen to its lowest level for 16 years.
In the year to June, overall net migration from both EU and non-EU countries was 212,000.
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