Wednesday 7 September 2022

The Brown Stuff

"Look how many Coloureds we have!" I am mixed-race, and in 30 years of left-wing activism, I have never come across this competition on my own side. It exists only in the Conservatives' heads, and perhaps also in those of the Labour Right.

Most people would give you Kwasi Kwarteng's abilities no matter how much we disagreed with him, but the positions of Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary have now been filled purely and openly on the basis of skin colour. In order to win a battle that was being fought entirely in the collective imagination of the beneficiaries' political tribe.

Kwarteng, Suella Braverman and James Cleverly are all part of the privately educated 74 per cent of this Cabinet. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt. Let Braverman, in particular, take note.

Let her also take note that we have never not been cancelled, so that we need no lectures on cancel culture from those who have always silenced us but who now bellow that they themselves are being silenced. Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. 

2 comments:

  1. If there had not already been a black Shadow Foreign Secretary, would there now be a black Foreign Secretary?

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    Replies
    1. But a light one. Ah, the subtleties of identity politics. If only Labour had thought to appoint a Shadow Foreign Secretary who believed in peace, and challenged the Government to match that.

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