Birmingham MP Jess Phillips has told how she bravely fended off a mugger in a tussle near the Houses of Parliament.
The Labour politician was in Westminster waiting for a taxi, just yards from armed guards, when a cyclist rode up beside her and tried to snatch her phone.
After the incident on Tuesday night, the Yardley MP tweeted: “Man just rode past me on a bike outside Parliament and tried to grab my phone out of my hand. Reader, he failed.”
She later told the Sun newspaper: “I was looking for a taxi when a man on a bike slowed down and said something to me, which I didn’t hear.
“He then made a grab at my phone. I wouldn’t let go, so we had a bit of a tussle, and then he gave up and shot off.
“I shouted back after him, “What the f*** are you doing?”.’
The MP is known for her outspokenness, including previously intense criticism of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.
In a December 2015 interview, she said: “I’ve said that to him and his staff to their faces, the day that it becomes clear that you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won’t knife you in the back, I’ll knife you in the front.”
In August Phillips, a staunch campaigner on women’s issues , told how she had hit ‘peak block, peak mute’ on Twitter, after receiving hundreds of death and rape threats after tweeting about sexism within the Labour Party .