What The Huq?

Was there not already a huge story this week about the people who were now running the Labour Party? With a heavy racial element? Ask around. One of the people named in the Forde Report has been calling me a "Mulatto" for nearly 20 years, since he was on the staff of Tony Blair's Chief Whip, who was my MP. The right wing of the Labour Party is the nastiest faction in British politics by a country mile.

Within that, though, Rupa Huq may be feeling her way towards the realisation that it is class that matters. Kwasi Kwarteng really is a prime example of that. Then again, so is she. He will not, but David Lammy should make this a "She goes or I go" moment, "She loses the whip, or I resign." Jeremy Corbyn should add that he would not want to take the whip with someone like that. Let's see Keir Starmer get out of that one.

In fact, if this is not bringing the party into disrepute, then what is? Expel her. People have been expelled from the Labour Party for far less. And would the Constituency Labour Party at Ealing Central and Acton be prepared to readopt this person as its parliamentary candidate?

Labour has pretty much monopolised the Afro-Caribbean vote, which of course is not Kwarteng's background, but it has done very little to bring on members of that community, especially men. They have noticed. The Red Wall has fallen, and the Black Wall will be next, if only to mass abstention in the first instance. In any case, the Red Wall and the Black Wall are no longer two different places, if they ever were.