The Labour Party are showing the
classic signs of a political party that's under pressure, as having run out of
token slogans, like "One Nation" this and that, or the latest
"Cost of Living Crises", their daily mouthpiece, the Daily Mirror,
continues to attack Mr Miliband's political adversaries in the most dubious
fashion, by carrying out a campaign of misrepresentation and propaganda, more
reminiscent of American presidential adverts, where rubbishing and trivialising
your opponents is far more important than offering a viable political
alternative to them.
Possibly as part of flipping
through their new negative campaigning playbook, over the past few days,
Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, has been wheeled out in public
by the Daily Mirror to add his own two-penneth-worth about how truly nasty
their Conservative opponents are; and making sure to let his readership know
that if they're Black or Asian then the Tory Party was part of their everyday
problems, not a potential solution.
"The Tories are out of
touch and not to be trusted when it comes to race" Labour claimed
today, according to the newspaper. In a stinging attack, Labour frontbencher
Sadiq Khan suggested the Conservatives came across as part of the “racist
establishment” of the 1980s. The
Shadow Justice Secretary also said that David Cameron’s insistence that
his party wanted to reach out to Black and Asian voters should be viewed with “suspicion”.
He pointed out the Coalition Cabinet was “overwhelmingly white and male”
with Baroness Warsi, the only member who was from an ethnic minority
.
Writing for the Mirror, the
Labour Shadow Minister said: “No party can understand society without
looking like the country it represents. “Britain will know when the Tory party
has finally changed on race and ethnicity – after all, seeing is believing.”
He went on: “But as the election gets closer, the Tories are targeting
ethnic communities. They say they’ve changed, but have they?”
Mr Khan also revealed today how
Labour was to launch a new drive to reach out to black and minority ethnic
voters. He said the party could not “rest on its laurels” and
assume it had the black vote in the bag. The Tooting MP added: “We need
to give the next generation of ethnic minority Brits, a reason to vote Labour,
not just because it was something their parents have always done.”
His comments came after Tory
election candidate Afzal Amin admitted last week that the “general
perception” among ethnic minorities was the party was racist. And Tory
election guru Lynton Crosby had reportedly said that reaching out to ethnic
voters “muddies” the party message.
Mr Khan also added :
"Having grown up as an Asian boy in Thatcher’s Britain, I’m suspicious of
the Tories on race. It was tough, with a racist establishment which the Tory
Government failed to challenge. They ignored Stephen Lawrence’s family after
his murder and they were never on my side when I suffered racism. I’m proud to
be an MP for the Labour Party – which has always fought for those facing
discrimination. Only Labour’s policies speak to
minority Brits, from tackling stop and search abuses to hiring more minority
police officers."
Obviously, for a purportedly
educated man, Mr Khan is either being deliberately disingenuous, or really is
pretty stupid to begin with. Having employed the usual left-wing attempt to
close down debate on his own comments by deploying the charge of
"racist" against his political opponents, one can only assume that
Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary recognises that he is attempting to use a
fairly vacuous argument to begin with; and hopes that his Black and Asian
readers will simply be foolish enough to fall for it, which I am sure many will
not.
First of all, the reason why the
Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, UKIP and the
rest of the minor political parties are represented by white people, is because
some 87.1% of the UK population is white. There would be something seriously
wrong with the country if a predominantly white electorate were to vote almost
entirely for either Black or Asian representatives, especially when people from
such ethnic groups don't generally stand for election to public office and only
account for between 3 and 5% of the total population.
As for the actual disparity
between men and women on the government benches, although Labour have a much
better record than the Conservatives in that particular respect, that has as
much to do with Women-only constituency shortlists, as it does with the Labour
Party attracting more women into politics generally. The truth of the matter,
is that purely on the basis of parliament reflecting the British population in
terms of gender, there should be around 325 female MP's sitting in the House of
Commons, on both sides of the house, so Labour is certainly in no position to
criticise anyone else about female representation in Westminster.
As for the other issues raised by
Mr Khan in his newspaper article, his growing up with a racist establishment,
one that ignored the family of Stephen Lawrence, that were never on his side
when he personally suffered racism, whilst at the same time praising the Labour
Party that always fought for those facing discrimination, that tackled the
issues of Stop and Search abuses, the Labour Party that hired more ethnic
minority police officers. Of course, Mr Khan offers no qualification over the
"establishment" that he's referring to, when he whinges about his own
troubled past, before trying to closely associate his own personal suffering
with that of the Lawrence family, as if there could be any comparison. The
callous murder of Stephen Lawrence was a tragedy, but no more so than the hundreds
of other personal tragedies that are visited on British families everyday of
the week, every week of the year. The death of a loved one, whether by fair
means or foul is a tragedy, regardless of whether you're white, black, British,
Asian, or whatever. But for Mr Khan to try and make political capital out of
that specific tragedy for entirely for party advantage, is a rather despicable
method of trying to score points over your political opponents. But then, when
you have a senior politician still whingeing and complaining about perceived
wrongs done to him several decades before, then maybe it says more about him as
an individual than it says about our country at large.
And as to Mr Khan's claim that
the Labour Party somehow reduced the numbers of Stops and Searches carried out
by the police, perhaps he has conveniently forgotten about the 101,000 Stops
and Searches that were carried out in 2009/10 under Section 44 of the Terrorism
Act 2000, that was introduced by the Labour Party. Perhaps Mr Khan has also
forgotten about the 150,000 S & S's that were carried out under the same
regulations in 2008/09, or the 1.2 million Stop and Searches (all sections)
that were carried out in England and Wales in the year 2009/10. That is not to
forget the 878,153 Stops and Searches that were carried out by police in the
year 2005/06, but perhaps Mr Khan doesn't believe that these actions are
anything to do with the Labour Party that he's talking about in his recent
newspaper articles, the same political party that has been instrumental in making
us one of the most stopped and surveilled democratic populations in the world? But then, isn't that the thing about being a good liar, you need a very good memory; and clearly in that particular respect, Mr Khan is obviously a bit of a failure. However, no doubt he can put that down to being a member of an ethnic minority as well?
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