Antihindu, Muslim views return to haunt London mayor candidate

LONDON: The Conservative Party announced its candidate for the 2020 London mayor election last week, but Shaun Bailey’s views against allegedly privileging Dewali over Christmas and accommodating Hindus and Muslims in UK society have evoked renewed criticism.

Senior Labour MP Virendra Sharma said on Wednesday it is “appalling” that in this day and age, the Conservative Party has selected a candidate with views that are outdated and objectionable. The mayor of London, known for its multiculturalism, is Pakistani-origin Sadiq Khan, who will stand again as the Labour candidate in 2020.

In a pamphlet produced for the Centre for Policy Studies in 2005, the Afro-caribbean-origin Bailey wrote in a section on “Multiculturalism”: “Among the working class, unless you are one of those ‘Queen and Country who support the football team’ sort of British people, you are lost.”

Confusing Hindu and Hindi, he added: “You don’t know what to do. You bring your children to school and they learn far more about Diwali than Christmas. I speak to the people who are from Brent and they’ve been having Muslim and Hindi days off.

“What it does is rob Britain of its community. Without our community we slip into a crime riddled cess pool.” Concerns about the Conservative Party’s stand on multiculturalism were raised during the 2016 London mayoral election also.