SHARED IDENTITY POLITICS:

Keir Starmer wants to show that Labour is ready for power. The days of irresponsible policies and crank MPs are over. They are the adults in the room after successive waves of Tory crises. Only a few hours before his speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday this pristine image was dented.

At a conference fringe event Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton, said of the Chancellor of Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, that "he superficially is a black man". She added, by way of absurd evidence: "He went to Eton, he went to a very expensive prep school... if you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn't know he's black." Huq had the whip suspended for these comments. 

Huq's viewpoint is offensive, but what is immediately striking is just how bizarre it is. Why should being privately educated and well spoken disqualify someone from being black? Are the only authentically black people the ones who grew up in council estates and sound like rappers? Huq is hostile to Kwarteng's politics. This is fair enough; disputation is fundamental to politics. But embedded in her mind, apparently, is a view of black people that ought to be unthinkable for someone who represents a party that prides itself on progressive values on race.

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