Labour would help schools to train young male influencers who can counter the negative impact of people like Andrew Tate, the shadow education secretary has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bridget Phillipson said that in order 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 who has amassed 8.8 million followers on the social media website X, and has continued to use his platform even as he faces rape and human trafficking charges in Romania.
The Labour party announced plans on Tuesday to help schools develop young male mentors and teach pupils how to question the material they see on social media from people like Tate.
“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 become leaders in their schools could then reach more people by becoming online influencers 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 the proposals, Labour would send “regional improvement teams” into schools to train staff on introducing the peer-to-peer mentoring programme.
“I do think it is incredibly important that, if we are going to tackle misogyny in our schools and in wider society, then we need to start making progress with children and young people,” Phillipson said.
“It also has to be young men and young women alike, we can’t just leave it to young women to call out unacceptable behaviours or report issues that are happening. It’s really powerful if men all step in and make clear that kind of sexist or misogynistic behaviour is not acceptable, and they don’t tolerate it either.”
Phillipson said that schools should tackle the problem of Tate and other misogynistic influencers “head on” and talk to pupils about it. “I think there is a risk that sometimes we don’t give young people enough credit for already starting to understand some of what is out there. Pretending that this isn’t a problem is not the answer,” she said.
