On Thursday, 11th June, Conservative MPs defended Home Secretary Priti Patel after 30 Labour MPs from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds had accused Patel of trying to generalise different kinds of racism faced by BAME communities by “using” her own experience of racism.
Senior Tory MPs including health secretary Matt Hancock and home secretary Sajid Javid have supported Patel after reading the letter where Labour MPs accused Patel of gaslighting the racism debate in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in the UK.
Addressing the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing, Hancock said, “Priti Patel was not wrong to talk of her personal experiences of racism. I have seen this letter, and I abhor this divisive identity politics that’s being levelled against Priti Patel. I am incredibly proud to be part of the most diverse government in history.”
Former chancellor Sajid Javid and the first ever British Pakistani MP to have been appointed the chancellor of ex-chequer in the UK has also called the letter “utterly misguided and irresponsible”. He tweeted,
“Imagine listening to an ethnic-minority woman’s history of suffering racist abuse - and then deciding that you’d rather condemn the victim than her abusers,” he tweeted.
Labour MPs including Diane Abbott and Clive Lewis had expressed their “dismay” after Patel said that she “would not take lectures from the other side of the house” while stating her own experience of being called a “Paki” when she was a child.
Later, in the strongly worded letter, Labour MPs told Patel that they were disappointed “at the way you used your heritage and experiences of racism to gaslight the very real racism faced by black people and communities across the UK”.
The letter was coordinated by the shadow community cohesion minister, Naz Shah. Others Asian MPs who signed included Tulip Siddiq, Seema Malhotra, and Rosena Allin-Khan.
