She describes her family as poor people living as outsiders in an impoverished area of London, who "kept their heads down and tried to assimilate by aping the class mannerisms of the English.
"[12] Her father, Alfred, was a dress salesman, while her mother, Mabel, ran a children's clothes shop and both were committed Labour voters.
[7] She took her opinion column to The Guardian's sister-paper The Observer, then to The Sunday Times in 1998,[14] before beginning her association with the tabloid Daily Mail in 2001.
In November 2010, The Spectator and Phillips apologised and agreed to pay substantial compensation and legal costs to a prominent British Muslim they falsely accused of antisemitism.
[20] In September 2013, it emerged that her Mail column was to end, although according to Phillips, the newspaper wanted her to continue to write features and other articles for it.
[36] Shortly after Obama's re-election for a second term, Phillips said that "Four years ago, America put into the White House a sulky narcissist with an unbroken history of involvement in thuggish, corrupt, far-left, black power, Jew-bashing, west-hating politics".
[39] A year later she criticised Trump for retweeting videos from Britain First's leader Jayda Fransen, calling them "beyond stupid, reckless and reprehensible."
"[42] She has further argued that "Man-made global warming theory has been propped up by studies that many scientists have dismissed as methodologically flawed, ideologically bent or even fraudulent.
[43] Phillips' published views on these topics have been rebutted by scientists and academics, including John Krebs and Nicholas Stern.
[44][45] Melanie Phillips supported Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent work triggered controversy about the MMR vaccine and led to his being struck off the medical register.
Through numerous articles in the Daily Mail and The Spectator, Phillips championed Wakefield's claims while casting doubt on their rebuttal by scientists, doctors, and politicians.
[46][48][49] Phillips continued to support Wakefield after his research methods and motives began to attract serious scrutiny and criticism: "While Mr Wakefield is being subjected to a witch-hunt, and while the parents of the affected children are scandalously denied legal aid to pursue the court case which may well have finally brought to light the truth about MMR, those powerful people in the medical establishment are continuing to misrepresent the evidence.
[53] Phillips expressed opposition to Irish independence, declaring on 7 March 2017 in her column in The Times, that the "most troublesome bits" of the UK are "showing signs of disuniting".
For her, Scottish nationalism and Irish republicanism are cultural phenomena "rooted in romanticism and myth", while Englishness "came to stand proxy for all the communities of the British Isles".
The Irish ambassador to the United Kingdom, Daniel Mulhall, said on Twitter that the country's sovereignty is "based on strong sense of identity, distinctive culture & shared values and interests" and rejected her claim.
She also stated that the UK Independence Party is prepared to embody "truly conservative attitudes" and has attracted a sizeable protest vote, despite its "unsustainable spending policies".
[60] However, she has also offered tempered praise of Tony Blair's attitude to Islamic extremism,[61] and she supported his policy of entering the Iraq War.
Its authors responded with a follow-up study, showing that young adolescents, in common with their counterparts in primary schools, adopt a pluralist viewpoint with virtually no nationalist or racist comments.
[64] Phillips became a "scathing critic of modern Britain" which she regards as "a debauched and disorderly culture of instant gratification, with disintegrating families, feral children and violence, squalor and vulgarity on the streets".