I have roughly 45 minutes with the Minister before she needs to dart off to Blackpool. Strictly? I ask. No, an event for International Men’s Day, she replies. And with that, before I can hit record on my Voice Memo app, we’re diving straight into Labour’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.
“It sounds ambitious,” she starts. “But we have to do it. There’s no time to waste.” She cites the following Labour Manifesto commitments: introducing independent legal advocates for rape victims, strengthening the role of the victim’s commissioner, and putting domestic abuse specialists in 999 call centres.
“It’s about everyone coming together to drive that cultural change about why we have this issue in our country tackling sexism, misogyny, violence against women and girls head on, and making sure that it’s totally unacceptable wherever it happens.”
Our conversation turns to image-based abuse – which GLAMOUR defines as a “broad term that covers a range of harmful actions involving nude or sexual images” – and how the government intends to tackle it over the next four years. “Nearly a third of all women have experienced some form of intimate image abuse,” explains Alex. “It doesn’t discriminate, and it can be just as damaging as physical abuse in terms of the impact it has on your mental health, on feeling safe, on your feeling of being violated.”
“It’s fundamental that we tackle image-based abuse along with every other form of violence against women and girls.”
It’s far from the first time Alex has spoken out against online misogyny. Back in January 2023, the politician received rape and death threats for speaking out against the “toxic” influence of Andrew Tate, who has since been arrested and charged with sex trafficking, which he denies.
She raised the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions, accusing then-PM Rishi Sunak of being “too slow to recognise the damage this is causing”.
“Women were coming to me and talking about the horrors of certain influencers online and the rhetoric they were spewing and the impact it was having on their daily life,” explains Alex. “I needed to speak out, and I needed to raise this issue and bring public attention to it. The attention of people who are in a position where they can do something about it.”
While Alex was prepared for a certain level of backlash when she spoke out against Tate, she wasn’t “expecting the extent to which it was so severe, horrific and quite nasty”.
“All it did was just spur me on,” she continues. “For every rape or death threat that I received for speaking out about this, I got 10 more supportive emails or messages from people who were thanking me for speaking out and urging me to do more.”
The political has always been personal for Alex Davies-Jones. She grew up in a “traditional South Wales Valley home” and was profoundly influenced by her dad, Austin, a miner who went on strike in the eighties. “Hearing about that struggle probably taught me how important it is to value each other,” Alex reflects. “The values of fairness, equality, socialism, trade unionism, and how important all that is to look out for each other.”
Was it hard for Alex to break into the Westminster bubble? “I think it’s hard for any woman to break into the Westminster bubble,” she says. “This system was designed for men of a certain stature who come from a certain background, who have an innate privilege. So to be any woman breaking into this place is special and unique.”
