Britain’s finance minister is only “superficially” black because he went to a good private school, and “you wouldn’t know” his ethnic identity from hearing him on the radio, according to racist claims made by a prominent left-wing MP today.
Labour MP Rupa Huq was suspended by her party on Tuesday after demands for her revocation grew after leaked audio of her attacking the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, over his race surfaced.
Huq is said to have made the remarks at a Labour Party conference event about race on Monday, which have since been condemned as exemplifying “racist tropes.”
“He’s superficially a black man,” the Labour party politician said. “But… he went to Eton [College], he went to a very expensive prep school, all the way through, the top schools in the country.”
“If you hear him on the Today [radio] programme, you wouldn’t know he’s black,” she went on to say.
The event’s chair, Sunder Katwala, then intervened, emphasising that Kwarteng’s conservative status does not make him “not black,” before arguing that the Labour Party should be “careful” with such statements.
However, the hardline Corbynite MP was clearly not cautious enough on this occasion, as Huq has now been suspended by her party.
Anglican priest and political pundit Calvin Robinson said that Huq’s statements exemplified “racist tropes which are increasingly popular amongst the hard-Left” that “a person’s skin colour should determine their thought process, their politics, and their opinions,” was among those who expressed concern about Huq’s implication that race is linked to politics and that racial identity can be stripped away for having the wrong politics or life experiences.
“If the Labour Party truly wants to shed its image as a racist party — after the now-infamous EHCR ruling — they should remove Huq’s whip and suspend her from the party with immediate effect,” Robinson said, arguing that “there should be no place for racism in British politics.”