Mammy Lammy

Like the equally sacked Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett, Richard Burgon voted Leave. Nobody seriously doubts that. His replacement, David Lammy, has called Leave voters Nazis, and supporters of apartheid. But I am intrigued at the suggestion that Lammy is black. He was given his parliamentary seat because Tony Blair thought that he was white. 

For the Tottenham by-election, one CV read, "SOAS, Harvard Law School, Archbishops' Council." Blair pictured David Cameron. The other read, "Widow of Bernie Grant." Blair pictured a mammy doll. Guess which one was given the seat. But Sharon Grant is white. And David Lammy is black? Well, is he? Is he really?

Light-skinned mixed-race I may be, although I have close blood relatives who are as dark as Lammy. But you are politically black when you have been called a nigger by the likes of Simon Henig, who is undoubtedly a supporter of Keir Starmer, and by the agency that Starmer used to head. I have been. They will fail to appreciate the English irony, but they have made me what they have called me.

Lammy is a dinosaur, a figure of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian Establishment that is integral to the right-wing Labour machine in certain urban areas. His and its support for Starmer recalls the Coloured and Indian members of the tricameral Parliament in the final years of apartheid South Africa.

The need now is to give a voice to a BAME Britain that is young, increasingly mixed-race, often in its second or subsequent generation to have been born in Britain, connected to every inhabited territory on the planet, found in every town, and well on the way to being found in every village. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. Please give generously.