Tag Archives: racism

Investigation of Conservative Islamophobia is another blatant whitewash

Boris Johnson’s comments about the clothes worn by Muslim women are only part of the huge volume of Islamophobia and racial hatred he has tried to stir up on his own – but the EHRC was happy to let the Tories investigate accusations against their own party and now that report stands revealed to be a whitewash.

An independent (was it?) review into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party has said there is no “institutional” problem – to howls of outrage from the rest of us.

Even though it does report attitudes that make “uncomfortable” reading for Boris Johnson and other Tories, the report is as much a whitewash as the examination of “institutional racism” in the UK, a few weeks ago.

The government has been resisting calls for that report to be discredited and scrapped ever since and the Conservative Party must now face the same calls over this.

Here’s the BBC, calmly presenting the Tories in as kind a light as possible (in other words, very dimly):

There is “clear evidence” the Conservatives’ complaints system is “in need of overhaul”, Professor Swaran Singh’s independent review into alleged Islamophobia and discrimination in the Conservative Party said.

It found anti-Muslim views were seen at local association and individual level.

But claims of “institutional racism” were not borne out by evidence of the way complaints were handled.

The report warned it “should make for uncomfortable reading for the party”.

But it also said it found “no evidence the party had… systematically failed any particular community”.

Oh, really?

Let’s go to some of our favourite people on Twitter for their analysis.

Here’s Ash Sarkar, who happens to be a Muslim who has suffered Islamophobia from Conservative Party members:

She was also able to provide an example of Islamophobia by a very senior Conservative, from very recent history:

She was referring to this:

Johnson’s own comment about women wearing the burqa (or burka, spell it how you like) looking like “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” was criticised as “insensitive”. That’s a strange way to spell “racist”!

It seems he tried to excuse himself with the pathetically weak comment that he wouldn’t do it again, now that he is prime minister.

How is that acceptable? He was saying that he still holds his racist, Islamophobic opinions, but he now intends to deceive the public that he doesn’t by choosing not to broadcast them!

Perhaps he feels he should not be picked out for special investigation because he isn’t the first Tory prime minister to be out-and-out racist filth. Theresa May’s “hostile environment”, that gave rise to her racist “go home” advertising vans and the Windrush scandal, springs to mind.

But apparently these historical examples of racism and Islamophobia are still not enough for the Singh review!

They were enough for Russ Jones:

Also on a party-wide basis:

Some have seen this as marking the right time for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to resume its own investigation into Tory Islamophobia, that was called off after the Singh review was announced.

This was rightly criticised at the time because the EHRC point-blank refused to call off its inquiry into Labour anti-Semitism after that party announced an internal review.

So Peter Oborne’s suggestion rings hollow:

The most that is likely to come from it, even if the EHRC deigns to respond, is confirmation that it is biased towards the Conservatives.

And as far as Conservatives are concerned, we have this comment to put the whole situation in its proper context:

Divide and rule. It is the Tory mantra. They have spent more than a decade encouraging prejudice and racism across the UK.

And they’re not going to stop, now they know it’s working.

Source: PM’s burka comments gave impression of insensitivity – report – BBC News

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Windrush campaigners are right. Tories can’t recognise their own racism; their report is meaningless

The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.

This Writer was hoping people affected by the Windrush scandal would have something to say about the government’s attempt to whitewash institutional racism in the UK.

And they do.

The Windrush scandal happened because a Conservative Home Secretary deliberately destroyed documents that proved people who immigrated into the UK to help rebuild after World War Two – and their descendants – had a right to remain here.

Years later, after allowing time for those affected to forget that there was likely to be any problem, the Tory government started contacting members of the so-called “Windrush generation” and their descendants, declaring that there was no record of their UK citizenship, stripping them of their rights and deporting many of them.

It was, by definition, a racist scandal, instigated by the nation’s most fundamental institution – its government. And now a government run by the same party is trying to claim that the UK does not have a problem with institutional racism.

The report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities mentions Windrush in its foreword, as an instance “where ethnic minority communities have rightly felt let down”, but continues: “Outcomes such as these do not come about by design, and are certainly not deliberately targeted.”

The second, and only other, reference to the scandal comes in the conclusion, when it is mentioned in passing as an exceptional example of things going wrong.

This is clearly inaccurate. The Lessons Learned review, an independent investigation into the causes of the Windrush scandal, found that the Home Office had displayed “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness” on race issues, “consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism”.

Let’s see what some of the Windrush generation have to say about it:

Patrick Vernon, whose campaigning helped force the government to take action on Windrush, said: “I can see why they haven’t included it. If they had focused on the scandal they would have had to admit that there was a systematic, structural failure in how the Home Office targeted the Windrush generation.”

Anthony Brown, who runs the Windrush Defenders Legal group in Manchester, and who was himself affected by Windrush problems, said he was frustrated by the suggestion that the scandal had been dealt with and it was time to move on. “I don’t feel that the government has fundamentally taken on board what the Windrush scandal means. A whole cohort of people were marginalised.

“The narrative of the report is that it is up to the individual to succeed: if you work hard, keep your head down, you will achieve and be successful in Britain, and if you don’t then, that’s your fault. The policies of the hostile environment took away people’s rights, but the report tries to say: actually you have all the rights you need.”

Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said it was remarkable that Windrush attracted barely a passing mention in the report. “To suggest that these are solved problems that do not need addressing is to gaslight millions of people who know the difference between their own lived experiences and the fictions the government would prefer us all to believe,” he said.

Community activist Desmond Jaddoo, who helps run the Windrush National Organisation to secure justice for thousands of people who were wrongly classified as immigration offenders by the Home Office, was disappointed by the report. “There was a culture of not believing members of the Windrush generation, who had to jump through hoops to prove that they were telling the truth.”

Elwaldo Romeo, who was told he was in the UK illegally and faced detention after 59 years in the country, said he was disappointed by what he had heard of the report. “There’s no compassion and no understanding of what we have gone through,” he said. “Of course they want to sweep it under the carpet. Is there racism within the governmentint and the Home Office? Yes.”

Yes there is. Think of the obstacles Priti Patel put in the way of people trying to get the compensation they deserved after being targeted for discrimination.

Even after being told they were wrong, Tory ministers tried to pretend they didn’t owe restitution to the people they had wronged for the injustice they had wrought.

The only question now is how long we have to wait until Boris Johnson retracts the report and apologises for releasing such an arrogant screed of gaslighting propaganda.

Source: Windrush campaigners alarmed by omissions of No 10 race report | Race | The Guardian

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StarmerLabour should be set for a local election drubbing. Here are SOME of the reasons

Starmer took the knee for Black Lives Matter: to him it meant nothing more than a photo opportunity. Black lives don’t matter to him – as we discovered when he attacked the organisation shortly after.

When you want to compile an article on the recent activities of a person, organisation, or indeed, political party, it’s always a good idea to check whether someone else has done the work first.

In this instance – regarding the diabolical record of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party on racism/anti-Semitism – an excellent summary has been posted by Thomas Clark, the Angry Yorkshireman who writes Another Angry Voice.

I make no apologies for appropriating it and publishing it here because it gives me an opportunity to urge you to read AAV on a regular basis if you are not already doing so. It can be found here.

These are AAV‘s findings against Starmer’s Labour – and some of the reasons people are likely to turn away from his party in May:

Keir Starmer’s Labour:

Accepted donations from a profoundly Islamophobic bigot (David Abrahams) who accused British Muslims of having “mixed loyalties”, described Muslim culture as “inherently violent” and claimed to be unable to spot the difference between normal moderate Muslims, and murderous fundamentalists.

Does absolutely nothing about the vile anti-black racists uncovered in the Labour Leaks report, and then casually boots the investigation into the long grass

Allows Labour MP (Rachael Reeves) to get away with creating an entirely uncritical hagiography of the racist, antisemitic, Nazi-supporting Tory Nancy Astor, who described Adolf Hitler as a welcome solution to the “world problem of Jews”, and said black people should be grateful for slavery. Then he promoted her into his cabinet!

Allows a Labour MP (Rosie Duffield) to get away with repeatedly Tweeting transphobic bile.

Orchestrates the mass expulsion of left-wing and peace activist Jews, a campaign of persecution that’s reliant on the “bad Jew” and “self-hating Jew” tropes to justify expelling Jewish people for having ‘wrong’ views on issues like Judaism, antisemitism, and the Israeli occupation. He simultaneously pretends that he’s opposed to antisemitism as this is going on!

Trivialises Black Lives Matter as “a moment” and repeatedly ignores the concerns of black Labour Party MPs.

Hides behind the sofa rather than clearly denouncing the ludicrous Tory report claiming that there’s no such thing as systemic racism in Britain.

Allows a Labour MP (Charlotte Nichols) to deliver leaflets using Nazi-style rhetoric about “incursions” of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller people, and then to pretend that it was a justifiable mistake because she was personally unfamiliar with the dictionary definition of the word “incursion”, even though it was used on a leaflet that must have been worked on, and approved by dozens of different people within the Labour Party.

Then there’s all the “flags and fatherlandism” bullshit Starmer has adopted because a London-based corporate image consultancy told him to try to trick northerners and the working class into voting Labour by adopting the tone and tactics of the National Front, rather than actually just listening them and then developing policies to rebuild their communities and improve the material conditions of their lives.

Contempt for black people and their concerns about systematic violence and persecution; contempt for Jews who refuse to conform to stereotypical Jewish behaviour and beliefs; contempt for British Muslims; contempt towards Trans people; contempt towards Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller people; contempt for northerners and the working classes; and all wrapped up in the “flags and fatherlandism” presentation style of the extreme-right!

I don’t know how many voters Starmer thinks he’s going to win back from the Tories with an approach like this, but it’s pretty obvious that for every one right-wing authoritarian voter he does win over, he’s going to drive away dozens of natural (socialist and socially progressive) Labour voters in the process, isn’t he?

Now I can get on with writing why people shouldn’t vote Conservative (unless I find someone else has done that as well)!

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Did Tory ‘politics steeped in division’ force Johnson’s top black advisor to quit?

‘Politics steeped in division’: Samuel Kasumu.

Samuel Kasumu, the Tory government’s top advisor on ethnic minorities, has finally quit – over a controversial report that claims there’s no institutional racism in the UK.

Mr Kasumu is known to have had deep concerns about government policy on race; he submitted his resignation in February, while working to promote the Covid-19 vaccination programme among minority ethnic groups.

At the time, he accused the Tory government of promoting “a politics steeped in division”.

He agreed to remain only after senior government figures like Nadhim Zahawi lobbied him to stay on.

It seems the racism report was the last straw.

Sadly we have no comment from Mr Kasumu himself explaining the reasoning behind his decision.

Downing Street has leapt in to “manage” the resignation with a claim that he had been planning to leave the government in May anyway.

That may be true, but: It isn’t May now. It’s April. Therefore he has left early. And right after publication of a report whitewashing the government’s record on racism – a record he has very clearly criticised in the past.

In This Writer’s opinion, there’s only one conclusion to draw:

The Tories’ top black advisor quit because he knows his government is racist and he can’t stand the hypocrisy any more.

Even the Tory-supporting BBC seems to agree:

Samuel Kasumu has been unhappy with the government’s stance on race for some time, sources say.

Source: Samuel Kasumu: PM’s adviser quits amid row over race report – BBC News

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Racism by gaslight as the UK’s racist government’s new report is a #whitewash

Tory racists: let’s remember that the government currently claiming there’s no institutional racism in the UK is led by a prime minister who had to apologise for an article claiming black people have lower IQs, then went on to say Muslim women in burqas resemble “bank robbers” and “letterboxes” and told us black people are “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. His novel 72 Virgins also contains an anti-Semitic trope.

The Tory government has released a report claiming that, despite thousands of cases of casual, institutional racism that we all see every day, the UK should be seen as an “exemplar” of racial equality.

Who do these racist Tory twits think they are going to fool?

The answer to that is obvious – the majority population of white British people who don’t experience racism in their day-to-day lives, many of whom habitually vote Conservative even though it is against their own interests to do so.

You know… the gaslit millions.

The report by the Tory government’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities was scripted by Downing Street and released under what Peter Walker of The Guardian described as “some pretty cynical news management”.

He explained in a short series of tweets:

He concluded: “We just ignored the “no approach” aspect as it seemed weird to not ask expert groups about a major report in their own subject area, and cynical for government press officers to expect this.”

It wasn’t weird at all. He was right the first time: it was an attempt to ensure that coverage of the story would only highlight the positive message – the lie – that your racist Tory government was peddling.

And let’s not have any nit-picking about my reference to these Tories as racist. This report deliberately hides the racism with which UK society is riddled in order to gaslight the gullible into thinking it doesn’t exist. That in itself is racist.

When you see the head of the commission, Tony Sewell, speaking about it, bear in mind that he is distrusted by the minority ethnic community because he has long claimed that institutional racism does not exist.

A summary of the report focused on education, claiming that many students from minority ethnic backgrounds do as well or better than their white peers.

That is not the experience of youngsters who continue to be treated as backward, simply because of the colour of their skin. Read Akala’s book Natives for a ground-level account of what it’s really like.

The Guardian article, having ignored the Tory embargo, features some on-the-nose responses too:

The shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, told the same programme that disproportionate rates of school exclusion and arrest among black children underlined evidence of an institutional problem. It would roll back progress if the government sought “to downplay or deny the extent of the problem, rather than doing what it should be doing which is getting on the front foot and tackling it,” she said.

A spokesperson for Black Lives Matter UK said that while the report focused on education, “it fails to explore disproportionality in school exclusion, eurocentrism and censorship in the curriculum, or the ongoing attainment gap in higher education.

“We are also disappointed to learn that the report overlooks disproportionality in the criminal justice system – particularly as police racism served as the catalyst for last summer’s protests. Black people in England and Wales are nine times more likely to be imprisoned than their white peers, and yet, four years on, the recommendations from the Lammy review are yet to be implemented.”

Halima Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said: “As we saw in the early days of the pandemic, 60% of the first NHS doctors and nurses to die were from our BAME communities. For Boris Johnson to look the grieving families of those brave dead in the eye and say there is no evidence of institutional racism in the UK is nothing short of a gross offence.

“The facts about institutional racism do not lie, and we note with some surprise that, no matter how much spin the commission puts on its findings, it does in fact concede that we do not live in a post-racist society.”

Maurice Mcleod, the chief executive of Race on the Agenda, described the conclusion of the inquiry as “government level gaslighting” and criticised the summary for claiming communities are being “haunted” by “historic cases” of racism, creating “deep mistrust” in the system that could prove a barrier to success.

He said the implications of the report were that “the reason so many black people don’t get on well in this society is because they are stuck in the past and this makes them mistrustful. So racism isn’t the problem, people talking about racism is the problem.”

“Government level gaslighting” is right – and is a theme that has been taken up on the social media by people who should know:

You get the picture?

Perhaps worst of all is the fact that this is only one example of the deception coming from your Tory government – which is gaslighting us so heavily that one Twitter user said it was in danger of breaching the Paris Agreement on Climate Change:

But there is an easy way to fight back:

Here’s some information to get you started:

Source: Downing Street suggests UK should be seen as model of racial equality | Race | The Guardian

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The Anna Rothery scandal suggests Labour is a sexist and racist institution under Starmer

Anna Rothery: her socialism is probably the reason she has been dropped as a Liverpool mayoral candidate. But the decision is also sexist and racist – and that is how Keir Starmer’s Labour party should now be described.

How is this an improvement?

Let’s go through the information we have, and please correct any errors.

There will be an election to fill the role of executive Mayor of Liverpool after Joe Anderson retired under a cloud.

The Labour Party held a selection process using an all-female shortlist which produced three candidates, including current Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Anna Rothery.

However, examination of Ms Rothery by party leaders revealed that she is:

  • female
  • black, and
  • socialist.

It seems that these are considered undesirable elements in Labour candidates under Keir Starmer’s leadership.

This may come as a surprise to many, especially as he should have expected a selection process that demanded that all candidates are female to produce candidates who aren’t men.

The selection process has reopened. It seems clear that the aim is to parachute in a candidate who is as neoliberal-blue as Starmer himself – in denial of Liverpool Labour members’ right to a free and democratic selection.

But the fact is that he will have eliminated a black woman to do it.

Therefore it is possible to claim that Starmer’s Labour is prejudiced against women and against people of colour: he and his party are sexist and racist.

I am reminded that his forerunner as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, suffered years of attacks, both in the media and by backstabbing right-wingers within the Parliamentary Labour Party, based on fabricated accusation of anti-Semitism.

So I ask:

How is genuine racism and sexism better than fake anti-Semitism?

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Free speech under attack: McVey attacks Barnardo’s over ‘white privilege’

Mad McVey: she looks like a pop-eyed loon in this image, and she’s been behaving like one in her attack on a beloved children’s charity.

Remember Esther McVile McVey? She was the poster girl for Tory bigotry before Priti Patel and she is still carrying out her vile work.

McVey has returned to headline news with an attack on Barnardo’s – one that could harm the organisation’s position as a charity.

She has said that a blog post by Barnardo’s, which aims to offer a guide to parents on how to talk to their children about racial inequality and white privilege in the UK, is “political”.

Charities are forbidden to campaign on political issues and could lose their status if found to be doing so.

But is it political campaigning when an organisation raises awareness of racism and the fact – fact – that in the UK white people have advantages that other ethnic groups don’t have?

Or is McVile distorting the facts in order to perpetuate the very racism the charity is highlighting?

In an opinion piece unwisely published by the Telegraph, she claimed that Barnardo’s could be “hijacked by people who want to use it as a platform for their political views”.

She said it would jeopardise Barnardo’s fundraising efforts it if it becomes “yet another charity more obsessed with political correctness and virtue signalling than actually helping people in need”.

That is a threat.

And what did Barnardos say, to provoke it?

The blog post states: “For the one in five Barnardo’s service users who are black, Asian or minority ethnic, the colour of their skin is an additional factor that negatively affects them and their families in a multitude of well documented ways.”

The article referenced well evidenced examples of white privilege, including higher employment rates, lower rates of prosecution and sentencing and a longer life expectancy for white people, with black African women having a mortality rate four times higher than white women in the UK.

The blog post states that being white doesn’t mean life is not hard, but it means it is not made harder because of your race.

“Helping children and those who nurture them, to understand what white privilege really means will not only prevent future generations from growing up to ignore race as an issue – but to be actively anti-racist through their actions.”

That all seems perfectly reasonable to This Writer.

But McVile went off the deep end:

McVey said while she will always be “grateful” to Barnardo’s, she was “deeply troubled” by its decision to “divert its attention to political activism”.

She continued: “This is such a misguided and misjudged move away from what the charity is about and what it ought to be doing.

“Barnardo’s is too important a charity to be hijacked by people who want to use it as a platform for their political views.”

On Friday, a group of 12 Conservative MPs reportedly wrote a letter to Barnardo’s chief executive, Javed Khan, to express their “concern and disappointment” over the post.

According to The Guardian, the MPs described the post as “ideological dogma” and “divisive militancy”. They also asked for it to be investigated by the Charity Commission.

So there it is – a threat against Barnardo’s charity status, simply because the charity spoke up about racial inequality.

Perhaps the 12 Tory MPs should be reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission? Ah, but the EHRC has already refused to investigate Tory racism, hasn’t it? Isn’t that an example of white privilege, right there?

It seems the UK’s governing party is employing that classic DARVO gaslighting technique – deny, attack, reverse victim and oppressor. By claiming Barnardo’s has become political, the Tories are hiding their own racism.

Source: Former minister criticises charity for ‘activism’ and discussing white privilege | The Independent

Less than a week after the EHRC damned the Tories over the Windrush scandal, deportations continue

The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.

It is ironic that the Conservative government’s own review of its behaviour in the Windrush Scandal was called Lessons Learned, considering its plan for a mass deportation to Jamaica tomorrow (December 2) shows that the Tories have learned nothing.

The Home Office failed to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under the Equality Act 2010 when implementing Theresa May’s “hostile environment” strategy, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

May’s plan, which commenced in 2012, was originally intended to make staying in the UK as difficult as possible for illegal immigrants – people who do not have leave to remain, in the hope that they would leave of their own accord.

But the policy’s severe harm to members of the so-called Windrush generation – whose documents showing that they were allowed to stay in the UK were destroyed by May’s Home Office shortly after she took over responsibility for it in 2010 – was ignored, dismissed and disregarded, despite the fact that the Home Office was warned about it repeatedly.

Perhaps part of the responsibility for this lies in the fact that the Tory government, obsessed with outsourcing work to private, profit-making firms, told landlords, banks, doctors and employers to carry out ID checks and report people who lacked adequate documentation.

As a result, thousands of people – yes, thousands – were denied access to health care, benefits and housing, before being deported illegally.

Engagement with representatives of the Windrush generation – people who came to the UK, mostly from Jamaica, to help rebuild the country after World War Two, after the government of the day promised to allow them to settle here (see the 1948 Nationality Act) – was limited.

Most of the government’s Windrush victims are still awaiting compensation.

Some have died before receiving it.

The EHRC report said the consequences – which have included several deaths – were “foreseeable and avoidable” and the organisation’s interim chair, Caroline Waters, said the treatment of the Windrush Generation was “a shameful stain on British history”.

This Counterfire article is damning in its condemnation of the policy:

Dehumanisation and discrimination are built into the very concept of the ‘hostile environment’. For the Tories, the purpose of the policy was twofold: to divert growing anger at their austerity policies and to undercut the rise of far-right rivals like Ukip by appropriating their unabashedly dehumanising and racist ideology.

That’s right – the Tories under Theresa May adopted a deliberately racist ideology. And the policy of dehumanising victims was taken directly from the Nazi playbook, as Jews know very well from bitter experience.

Counterfire continues:

The lives of migrants and ethnic minorities are routinely exploited and endangered for the political gain of those in power in this way. This is not recognised in the EHRC report, which is only able to recommend a set of vague rectifications that rely heavily on the government’s good will, such as the recommendation for the Home Office to ‘prioritise and act early’ on its Equality Act duties.

The Home Office under current Home Secretary Priti Patel has made a public commitment to avoid any similar events occurring.

So it is strange that Ms Patel is determined to force as many as 50 more people out of the UK – including another member of the Windrush generation – in a specially-chartered flight tomorrow:

Immediately after it was revealed that the flight was taking place, no fewer than 82 BAME celebrities wrote to six airlines known to have carried out such flights, begging them to reject contracts to carry out any more. It is not known which airline has been engaged to carry out tomorrow’s flight.

Signatories included the author Bernardine Evaristo, model Naomi Campbell, historian David Olusoga and actors Naomie Harris and Thandie Newton, as well as lawyers, broadcasters and NGO chiefs. Leading Windrush campaigners including Michael Braithwaite and Elwaldo Romeo also signed.

And now – better late than never – 70 MPs and peers have also written to Patel, demanding that the flight must be cancelled:

The letter, co-ordinated by Labour’s Clive Lewis, states:

You have previously committed to ‘righting the wrongs’ concerning the Windrush scandal. But eight months after the Windrush Lessons Learned Review was published, the recommendations have still not been fully implemented, it adds.

“Planning a pre-Christmas deportation flight demonstrates that the Home Office has so far failed to learn any lessons.”

The letter also highlights the threat posed by Covid-19 to anybody being forcibly deported:

“The conditions of deportation, such as shackling detainees to ushers for long journeys in potentially cramped conditions, risk exposing people to the virus,” the letter reads, adding that Black people are already at an increased risk of contracting coronavirus.

And there is the more tangible threat of deportees suffering harm or death at the hands of the authorities when they arrive at their destination:

“We know that five UK deportees were killed between 2018 and 2019. Some people in detention have scars from past abuse in Jamaica, or siblings who have been murdered.”

Strangely, Labour leader Keir Starmer has not signed the letter – nor have 12 of his front benchers. They are: Angela Rayner, Anneliese Dodds, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Lisa Nandy, Ed Miliband, Jon Ashworth, Rosena Allin-Khan, David Lammy, Jess Phillips, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper. Are we to conclude that these MPs approve of the Tories’ racism?

On the other hand, one of the signatories is former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn:

There is absolutely no doubt that the Conservative government’s racist deportations of people who have every right to remain in the UK should stop. This Writer also has absolutely no doubt that they won’t.

Priti Patel’s record marks her out as a vicious racist who delights in dehumanising and tormenting others.

It is sad to see that she faces no opposition from the so-called Opposition front bench.

But we should remember that the people who have opposed this obscenity are those who have been vilified by the Tory Establishment and their lackeys in the mainstream media. They have lied to us; they are not to be trusted.

And we need to find better ways to oppose them.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Rashford comes under media attack – but he’s done nothing wrong!

Marcus Rashford: Here’s a man who stands up for people who would otherwise suffer at the hands of a cruel government. What he does in his spare time, with his own cash, is his own business. What does the Daily Mail stand for?

This is classism and possibly racism from the Daily Mail.

The newspaper- if you really want to dignify it with that description – ran a story that footballer Marcus Rashford has bought five houses worth ÂŁ2 million.

What business is it of ours? It’s his money and what he does with it is his concern.

Here’s the tell, in the headline: “Campaigning football star Marcus Rashford has bought five luxury homes…”

Oh, now we get it! He’s under attack because he dared to campaign for the Conservative government to actually face up to its responsibilities and look after people its policies are harming.

Rashford responded:

He realised there was a dog whistle in this – and he wasn’t the only one.

Many people saw it as racism:

The most sinister aspect of this is that it comes across as a prelude; there will be worse to follow. Gary Lineker knows the score:

Happily, this is a tactic that has backfired; the Mail will lose support because of this:

NHS Million’s decision is perfectly understandable and This Writer hopes others will follow it.

I wish I could do the same but This Site (and others) has to debunk the nonsense these mass-media extremists use to pollute our political consciousness.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Priti Patel is NOT a ‘people’ person. Travellers are her latest victims. Will you be next?

She thinks it’s all great fun: but whoever put the horns on this image of Priti Patel knew the truth of the matter.

We know the Home Secretary is a full-on, flat-out racist – she deports foreigners, she would deport UK citizens if the Windrush scandal had not happened, and now she has been caught stirring up racial hatred against travellers.

It’s very odd behaviour for a person whose own parents were immigrants into the UK

But here it is: she has been caught fabricating details of a police officer’s death in order to make travellers seem inherently criminal, as an ethnic group.

And she did it in a Zoom meeting with Jewish leaders – hosted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is itself notorious for its zealousness in defending their own ethnic group from claims that it has any inherently unsavoury traits.

In this, the Board of Deputies is right. No ethnic group is inherently criminal – as an ethnic group.

Yet Ms Patel said she was

determined to stamp out the “criminality that takes place and that has happened through Traveller communities and unauthorised encampments”.

More than 80 leading academics, race equality organisations, and politicians have signed a letter to Patel, urging her to retract her “hate speech”.

One has to ask how she would describe herself – the daughter of refugees who came to the UK after facing persecution in Uganda.

Ah, but that would probably be too close to home.

She seems a perfect candidate for “unconscious bias” training.

Except, of course, she’s probably one of the 40 Conservative MPs who have refused it out of hand. It seems she – and they – have some kind of bias against it…

She is the secretary of state for the Home Department.

She is a racist, to our certain knowledge.

She may also be prejudiced against any number of other traits.

So the question you have to ask yourself, in a country where the Home Secretary is lining people up to be her targets, is:

When will she send people for me?

POSTSCRIPT: Mrs Mike was disgusted to hear about Patel’s behaviour, and asked a very reasonable question: why do we put up with this unacceptable behaviour, these unacceptable viewpoints, from people who are supposed to be our political leaders?

Mrs Mike thinks Priti Patel should be pulled out of Parliament by the ear and slung onto the street.

She cannot understand why nobody has actually used legally-enforcible means to do this.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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