[1] Phipps first stood as a Labour parliamentary candidate in the Walthamstow East by-election in March 1969, where he lost decisively.

His successes in the oil industry made him one of the more wealthy Labour MPs, as demonstrated by the fact that during parliamentary elections he was often seen campaigning in a Rolls-Royce limousine.

[2] Firmly on the right of the party, Phipps was a supporter of the EEC but opposed to Scottish and Welsh devolution, while his business background left him with a liberal attitude to economics and taxation that was arguably closer to Thatcherism than to mainstream social democracy.

[2] Following his departure from the House of Commons, Phipps was (along with Michael Barnes and Dick Taverne) one of the early "outriders" agitating for a split in the Labour Party, forming the Association of Democratic Groups in the West Midlands as a platform for his political ambitions.

Although by now a convinced populist free-marketeer, after the dissolution of the Owenite SDP in 1990 Phipps nevertheless cautiously embraced Labour once again as the "only hope" for social democracy, while maintaining that it must first "untie its links with the unions and rid itself of the class-struggle left".