Labour MP Suspended For Calling Chancellor Kwarteng 'Superficially Black'

Ealing Central and Acton MP Rupa Huq nowjoins former Labour chief whip Nick Brown, Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe and former party leader leader Jeremy Corbyn on the list of suspended or expelled Labour MPs.

The Labour Party has suspended one of its MPs for her "racist" remark that Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng was only "superficially black".

Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton in west London, made the comments at a fringe meeting on Monday at the Labour conference in Liverpool, alongside party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds.

An audio recording of the meeting was leaked by political gossip site Guido Fawkes on Tuesday.

"Superficially he is a black man," Huq said of Kwarteng, whose parents emigrated to the UK from Ghana in West Africa. "If you hear him on the Today Programme, you wouldn’t know he is black."

“He went to Eton, I think, he went to a very expensive prep school, all the way through, the top schools in the country," she added.

I was bullied in school by other brown kids for 'not acting black'.

Why? Because I liked books, was studious, eloquent, ambitious, and high-achieving. These were deemed 'white' characteristics.

Rupa Huq has the reasoning capacities of an 11-year-old playground bully. https://t.co/ubPpsnTUTp

— Mercy (@MercyMuroki) September 28, 2022

Huq neglected to mention that she herself attended the private Notting Hill and Ealing High School.

The MP repeated the "superficial" label as she tried to downplay the Conservative cabinet's ethnic diversity — far greater than that of previous Labour governments.

"Superficially they've had four brown chancellors and that," she said, referring to Kwarteng and his predecessors Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak and Nadhim Zahawi.

She referred to Sunak as "a little brown guy" as she disparaged black candidates in the recent Tory leadership contest, including fourth-place Kemi Badenoch, the child of Nigerian parents, and new Home Secretary Suella Braverman who is of Afro-Indian descent like Sunak.

The meeting, entitled 'What’s Next for Labour’s Agenda on Race?", was called by the British Future and the Black Equity Organisation. Chairman Sunder Katwala was quick to stress that Kwarteng's conservative politics "doesn’t make him not black… and I think the Labour Party has to be really careful."

Huq's comments prompted an official letter of protest from Tory party chairman Jake Berry to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

After initially telling the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday that she would "stand by" her comments, Huq later issued an apology to Kwarteng.

"I have today contacted Kwasi Kwarteng to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies for the comments I made at yesterday’s Labour conference fringe meeting," she tweeted. "My comments were ill-judged and I wholeheartedly apologise to anyone affected."

Starmer told radio station LBC on Wednesday morning that Huq's comments were "racist" and that the MP would be "dealt with".

"What she said in my view was racist, it was wrong and she's been suspended from the whip in the party and that was done very, very quickly," Starmer said. "I think that tells you how strongly I feel about those comments."

"She shouldn't have said it. She will be dealt with and I'll be absolutely clear it was racist."

Huq joins former Labour chief whip Nick Brown, Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe and Starmer's predecessor as party leader Jeremy Corbyn on the list of suspended or expelled Labour MPs.

Brown had the party whip suspended earlier this month after an unspecified allegation was made against him. Webbe was expelled from the party in November 2021 after her conviction for harassing and threatening another woman with whom she believed her boyfriend was having an affair.

Corbyn was had both the whip and his party membership suspended in October 2020, along with the whip, over his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission's report into claims of anti-Semitism in Labour's ranks.

The Conservative Party conference kicks off in Birmingham next week. Bishop Aukland MP Dehenna Davison handed out "Tory Scum" badges at the 2021 gathering in Manchester in mockery of Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner's comments at the previous week's Labour conference in Brighton.