Public support for Labour MP Dawn Butler is growing, along with a campaign for the removal of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick – but her own party leader, Keir Starmer, is silent. Why?

Starmer – a former Director of Public Prosecutions and a staunch supporter of the police – has been on the social media since the car in which Ms Butler was travelling was stopped under false pretences by police yesterday (August 9). So have many of his right-wing – sorry, centrist – lieutenants. But they haven’t had a word to say about it.

The new New Labour leader has been struggling with his attitude to racism after his many attempts to end the anti-Semitism controversy in the Labour Party came unstuck when confronted by the facts, and after his comments about Black Lives Matter showed him up as a hypocrite.

Now, faced with a clear example of police racism and the racial profiling of his MP, Starmer is hesitating. Would he really rather side with the racists?

Perhaps he would feel more comfortable siding with the liars who have crawled out from the virtual woodwork of the social media to attack Ms Butler with false claims that she “flipped” the video she took of the incident and that her passenger was white (and not black). But these have been shown to be nonsense:

Perhaps Mr Starmer would feel more comfortable siding with Tory London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, who doesn’t seem to understand institutional racism…

… and whose attitude to racial profiling changes according to whatever he thinks is politically expedient:

Starmer’s silence is deafening – and the commentariat is flagging it up:

This is far from the first incident involving the police targeting cars with black drivers and passengers – in fact, black people are far more likely to be stopped and searched for flimsy reasons than white people. One of the excuses offered to Ms Butler was that tinted rear windows may be illegal (the law says they’re not) and this is an old favourite among the Met stop-and-search gang.

Ms Butler herself has pointed out that it is 20 years since the Macpherson Report labelled the Met Police as “institutionally racist” but nothing has been done to change the situation.

So now a campaign has sprung up online to remove current Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick – under whose control the current situation has worsened:

Oh, and are we interested in the difference between the way the police treated Ms Butler – an MP – and the way they treated Dominic Cummings, who is only an MP’s advisor?

UPDATE 5.45pm, August 10: Starmer has finally broken his silence on Twitter – although it really wasn’t worth the wait. You can see his comment here, along with some responses to it.

I’m particularly drawn to the reply that states: “You were too sh*t scared to make a public comment because you hadn’t focus grouped it. Jesus. Spineless.” It sums up Starmer in a nutshell.

Other comments assert that Labour staffers – for whom Starmer has apparently shown support – have carried out racial profiling on some of the party’s black MPs.

This is a pathetic showing from a weak man who is unfit to lead.

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