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Something’s got under Labour’s skin. You can tell because their spin machine is going full tilt. Their target is Change UK. The arrival of the new party on the scene has triggered a massive trawl through prospective candidates’ social media posts, looking for instances of racist and sexist comments, in an attempt to prove that the “hard-centre is racist”.
It’s no bad thing that parties should seek to bring to light instances of racism and misogyny – and several legitimate examples of both have been unearthed.
Ali Sadjady, for example, a candidate in London for the European elections, resigned after an old tweet resurfaced, in which he made derogatory remarks about Romanians. “When I hear that 70% of pick pockets caught on the London Underground are Romanian it kind [sic] makes me want Brexit”.
An incriminating tweet from Joseph Russo, a leading candidate in Scotland, was also uncovered: “Black women scare me. I put this down to be chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black wh***.”
Change UK acted swiftly to distance themselves from both men. Yet they have stood solidly by another candidate, Nora Mulready, who was accused of “Islamophobia” and charged with “conflating terrorism with Islam” by Labour supporters and organisations which claim to speak for British Muslims. In comments posted online, Mulready suggested it was a “fallacy that Islamism is nothing to do with Islam” and that radical Islamism could be “Koranically justified”. She also said the concerns of far-Right leader Tommy Robinson should be “acknowledged” because he had “hit [a] societal nerve”.
Though I do not agree with everything Mulready has written, Change UK are right to stand by her. The concerted attempt by the Left to silence her and no-platform her from democratic politics has been correctly described as a “smear campaign” by her new party.
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