‘I won’t take lessons from a man who thinks that one in 1,000 women have a penis’
Minister’s blast at Starmer after he said Rishi ‘doesn’t get Britain’
SIR Keir Starmer came under fire yesterday after suggesting that Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t get Britain’.
The Labour leader faced a backlash after aiming the jibe at the Prime Minister during clashes in the Commons.
Labour denied claims that the phrase was a deliberate ‘dog whistle’ designed to draw attention to the fact that Mr Sunak is Britain’s first non-white PM.
Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said she was willing to give Sir Keir the ‘ benefit of the doubt’ that it was not meant as a racial slur. But she said the Conservatives ‘won’t take lessons about who gets Britain from a man... who thinks that one in a thousand women have a penis’.
‘Only he will know what he’s implying,’ she told Times Radio. ‘But the one thing that I would say is if that was the other way round, and a Conservative politician had said it about a Labour politician of colour, we’d have had no end of the confected outrage.
‘I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t about race, but I’m certainly not going to take lessons about who gets Britain from a man that tried to stop foreign criminals being deported, and who thinks that one in a thousand women have a penis.’
Sir Keir’s claim came during Prime Minister’s Questions. ‘Every week, the Prime Minister stands here and tells the country that they should be thanking him, not questioning him,’ Sir Keir said. ‘If you point out that the view on the ground is very different to that from his private jet, he says that you are talking the country down.
‘He just does not get it. He does not get what a cost of living crisis feels like. He does not know any schools where kids no longer turn up, and he does not understand what it is like to wait for a hospital appointment.’
Does the country not deserve so much better than a Prime Minister who simply does not get Britain?’ Mr Sunak said Sir Keir had given a half-hour speech last week which ‘ did not contain a single new idea’.
He added: ‘We have had four years of him as Labour leader and it is still all slogan and no plan.’
Mr Sunak was born in Southampton to East African- born Hindu parents of Indian Punjabi descent, Yashvir and Usha Sunak.
In response to Sir Keir’s comments, Downing Street said that Mr Sunak is ‘as British as Starmer and certainly more focused on the things that matter to the British people so it’s probably more for Starmer to explain what he meant by it’. Labour said Sir Keir was suggesting the PM was out of touch with everyday concerns.
A spokesman denied that it was ‘dog whistle’ politics‘. The point that Keir was making when he said about getting Britain is the reality of life facing people.’
Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi suggested that Sir Keir’s comments did have racial undertones. The Iraqi-born MP said he ‘flinched’ when he heard Sir Keir ‘trot out the sort of line that I’ve had to deal with all my life’.
He added: ‘I thought Labour had moved on from the dark days of Jeremy Corbyn, but it seems to be the same old Labour Party underneath the surface.’
‘Still all slogan and no plan’
WHEN Rishi Sunak vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to stem the tide of migrant boats, he was speaking for the law-abiding majority who want to end illegal immigration.
But the Prime Minister also believed he was drawing a sharp dividing line between the Tories and Labour, which has opposed every measure intended to stop the evil trafficking trade across the Channel.
In fact, it transpires that he has inadvertently created an ideological border right down the middle of his own party.
The latest flashpoint in this damaging civil war comes as Mr Sunak’s Rwanda legislation returns to the Commons.
MPs on the Tory Right have tabled amendments to toughen up the Bill – barring migrants’ legal appeals and preventing European courts grounding Rwanda flights except in limited cases. Without them, they say, the scheme is doomed to fail.
But the moderate One-Nation caucus, fearing such changes would breach our international human rights commitments, has retaliated with counter-amendments that would neuter Mr Sunak’s new law.
The whole spectacle is pathetic. Do these Tories, grandstanding as they engage in this absurd legislative arm-wrestling, realise how self-indulgent they look to voters?
Both sides insist the Rwanda deterrent is necessary. But through wilful intransigence, they risk it collapsing completely. That would only benefit Sir Keir Starmer, who is terrified of the scheme succeeding because he has no realistic alternative.
The Tories must swallow their pride, seek sensible improvements and ram the Bill through. Their enemies are Labour, the House of Lords and all who would scupper this important legislation – not each other.
If the party refuses to listen to voters and fails to stop illegal migration, they can expect electoral wipeout.
Then they will have the luxury of spending years watching Labour implement harmful migrant policies from the pointless irrelevance of the opposition benches.