Rupa Huq suspended after race row overshadows Starmer’s speech

Oh dear. Things couldn’t have been going better for Labour leader Keir Starmer. The left has been routed, the Tories are divided, the pound is plunging and the markets are panicking. But in true Labour style, his MPs are always on hand to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Speaking at a British Future event, Labour MP Rupa Huq – who has now had the whip suspended – made a rather unpleasant swipe at new Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

Huq, one of the hard-of-thinking drones in the Starmer Army, checked whether the Chatham House rule applied before telling attendees that Kwarteng was only ‘superficially’ black: ‘Superficially he is a black man… if you hear him on the Today Programme, you wouldn’t know he is black.’ The comments moved the fringe event chair, Sunder Katwala, to reprimand Huq that Kwarteng’s views ‘doesn’t make him not black… and I think the Labour Party has to be really careful.’

Clearly there was a Tory party mole in attendance because chairman Jake Berry revealed the comments in a letter which he tweeted an hour before Starmer’s big speech to the party faithful. And the title of the event in question? ‘What’s Next for Labour’s Agenda on Race?’ Clearly a diet of foot in mouth…