Baroness Warsi has quit the Tory Party over racism claims. Ironically, after her long crusade against Islamophobia, the Conservatives were about to accuse her of racist behaviour.

It’s the same tactic that was used in the Labour Party to get rid of thousands of members; they were accused of anti-Semitism after publicly criticising the Israeli government and military for persecuting Palestinians.

The claim against Warsi is based on a social media post she made in support of a woman who has been acquitted of a racially-aggravated public order offence.

Marieha Hussain was accused after holding a placard at a pro-Palestine protest depicting Conservative leader Rishi Sunak and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman as coconuts.

The BBC reported:

During her trial, prosecutor Jonathan Bryan told Westminster Magistrates’ Court [that] “coconut” was a well-known racial slur.

“[It has] a very clear meaning – you may be brown on the outside, but you are white on the inside,” he said.

“In other words, you’re a ‘race traitor’ – you’re less brown or black than you should be.”

But District Judge Vanessa Lloyd ruled the placard was “part of the genre of political satire” [endorsing Ms Hussain’s own position that it was satirical and humorous].

“The prosecution have not proved to the criminal standard that it was abusive,” she told the court.

“The prosecution has also not proved to the criminal standard that you were aware that your placard may be abusive.”

Ms Hussain subsequently issued a serious complaint against the Crown Prosecution Service, alleging that the case against her had undermined free speech and exposed her to “irreparable” damage.

Anonymous social media accounts (they’re always anonymous and they always hypocritically say they need to be, in order to protect their own right to free speech) called her racist while tabloid newspapers published details of her family and the cost of her parents’ home. Perhaps most seriously, Ms Hussain also lost her job as a secondary school teacher.

So the case against this teacher was thrown out of court – and she is in fact pursuing the CPS for bringing it forward. Why is the Conservative Party using it to attack Baroness Warsi?

Tory leadership candidate James Cleverly said on social media: “‘You’re not properly black if you’re a Tory’ is a particularly pernicious attack.

“I’ve been called a coconut too many times to laugh it off.

“It hasn’t held me back or brought me down, but a Conservative peer not recognising the abuse of other black colleagues is unacceptable.”

This is itself unacceptable, in the light of the court’s ruling that Ms Hussain’s placard was not a racist attack of that kind.

Baroness Warsi herself wrote: “It was the right decision and I rightly congratulated Marieha on her acquittal.

“I was subsequently asked to delete my public support for Marieha – I refused to do so.

“That is the basis of the complaint. No other comments or language is the basis of the complaint.”

She said the case was “due to be conducted in private behind closed doors” and so she “felt it appropriate in the circumstances to resign my whip and look forward to dealing with these issues openly and transparently”.

That is a canny move. She cannot now be subjected to the kind of kangaroo court antics that This Writer had to endure when the Labour Party falsely accused me of anti-Semitism bringing the party into disrepute (or maybe it was an anti-Semitism accusation – that’s how it was presented in all those libellous newspapers at the time).

The first Muslim woman to be in a UK Cabinet, Baroness Warsi was co-chair of the Tories after the 2010 general election, and then served as a minister in David Cameron’s government – but she quit as Minister for Faith and Communities in 2014 over the government’s policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

She has said she will discuss some of the issues raised by the party’s treatment of her in her forthcoming book, Muslims Don’t Matter. I wonder whether the title is a response to David Baddiel’s book and documentary, Jews Don’t Count.

This could get messy, and just when the Tories are about to elect a new leader – most likely either Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch, both of whom have been criticised by Baroness Warsi for their own attitudes.

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