Labour plan to battle misogyny in schools

Labour would help schools train young male influencers to counter the negative impact of people such as Andrew Tate, the shadow education secretary has said.

- Eleni Courea & Sally Weale

In an interview with the Guardian, Bridget Phillipson said that to combat sexual harassment, Labour wanted to see schools develop role models who could provide a “powerful counterbalance” to Tate and others like him.

Tate is a self-professed “misogynist” influencer, with 8.8 million followers on the social media website X, who has continued to use his platform even as he faces rape and human trafficking charges in Romania.

“Young male mentors within schools would be a powerful counterbalance to some of the negativity that young men might be exposed to online,” Phillipson said.

She expressed hopes that some of the young men who became leaders in schools could then reach more people by becoming online infl uencers themselves. “I would hope that the young male mentors involved would then also be able to share their experiences more widely, to kind of shift the discussion around what it is to be growing up as a young man today in modern Britain,” Phillipson said.

Under proposals to be announced today, Labour would send “regional improvement teams” into schools to train staff on introducing the peer-topeer mentoring programme.