Alexandra Lesley Phillips (born 26 December 1983) is a British journalist and former politician. She served as a Brexit Partymember 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.
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]
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 Phillips joined Talk.[25]
