Goldsmith/Khan: Who, exactly, is playing the “race card” here?
Conservative mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith (left) and his Labour rival Sadiq Khan [Image: Getty].
Join the dots: If the Goldsmith leaflet said Mr Khan – who is a Muslim – is radical, it’s not a huge stretch for any rank-and-file canvasser to draw the wrong conclusion and spread a message that is entirely inappropriate.
Furthermore, it seems odd that a campaign which states that identifying anyone as “the Muslim” is unacceptable would defend the use of the word “radical” in its leaflets. Even though “radical” is an acceptable political term, it has become associated with the word “Muslim” in a derogatory way.
Mr Goldsmith’s claim that Mr Khan was chosen by the same pool of party members that made Jeremy Corbyn the Labour leader is hard to support. He was indeed among the Labour MPs who nominated Mr Corbyn, but so were unsuccessful mayoral candidates Diane Abbott and David Lammy – and to suggest that the 48,000 London-based party members who supported Mr Khan all supported Mr Corbyn as well, while not being beyond the realms of possibility, is meaningless without evidence.
Zac Goldsmith, the Tory London mayoral candidate, has accused his Labour rival Sadiq Khan of “playing the race card” in an escalation of tensions in their electoral battle.
Goldsmith made the claim after Khan objected to being called “radical and divisive” on Tory election leaflets, saying the use of such language about a Muslim candidate was playing with fire.
Asked if the leaflets were a coded way of trying to link Khan to Islamic extremism, Goldsmith insisted he was making a point that he thought Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was radical. He said Khan nominated the Labour leader and was chosen by the same pool of party members.
Source: Zac Goldsmith accuses mayoral rival Sadiq Khan of ‘playing race card’ | Politics | The Guardian
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I heard this silver mouthed spoon idiot on Radio 4 this morning. I felt physically sick to think that such toffee nosed tw*ts could be in politics in the UK in the 21st century.