“Why can’t I as a white British female have that same right?” No condemnation from Labour leader who called BLM a ‘moment’
Keir Starmer has provoked outrage with a – to put it extremely charitably – less than full-throated condemnation of the racist comments of a white supremacist who called into this LBC radio phone-in.
The woman called in to discuss the racist booing by Millwall fans when players ‘took a knee’ before a recent football match – and began with a rant about condemnation of her husband, who took part in the booing, as a racist and about white ‘identity politics’. She then went on to ask Starmer why she can’t have the same apartheid right to exclude black people and others from ‘self-determination’ in the UK that the Israeli government uses to exclude Palestinians.
The condemnation of such racism wherever it occurs was conspicuous by its absence in Starmer’s response:
Starmer completely ignored the woman’s regurgitation of the racist ‘great replacement theory’. Then, to heap irony upon outrage, Starmer also said ‘of course’ he agrees with freedom of expression – even when it comes to racist booing. However, he and his acting general secretary are resorting to escalating suppression of non-racist and legally-protected freedom of expression among Labour members.
Starmer, who hosts the programme with Nick Ferrari – who created similar outrage when he asked black British journalist Afua Hirsch why she didn’t leave Britain if she thought it had so many problems – said at least twice earlier this year that the Black Lives Matter movement is a ‘moment’, condemned the toppling of a statue of a notorious slave-trader and, during a cosy interview with the same LBC presenter, welcomed comments by Jeremy Clarkson that he might now vote Labour.
Starmer also marked the UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People by meeting with a group that blamed Palestinians for their own murder by Israeli forces and failed to tweet any comment about Palestinians at all during the following week.
At the weekend, Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader launched the Project for Peace and Justice to promote equality for all.
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