UK Labour MP Suspended for Calling Conservative Minister ‘Superficially’ Black

Labour MP Rupa Huq arrives at the Cabinet office in central London on April 4, 2019. (Adrian Dennis /AFP via Getty Images)

The UK’s main opposition Labour Party has suspended an MP after she described a Conservative government minister as “superficially” black.

In an audio clip published online, Rupa Huq, the MP representing Ealing Central and Acton in west London, was heard discussing the elite school background of Kwasi Kwarteng, who became Britain’s first black chancellor of the Exchequer earlier this month.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng walks outside Number 10 Downing Street, in London on Sept. 6, 2022. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

“Superficially he is a black man,” she told a fringe event at the Labour Party conference held in Liverpool over the weekend.

“He went to Eton, I think. He went to a very expensive prep school. All the way through, the top schools in the country.”

“If you hear him on the ‘Today’ programme, you wouldn’t know he is black,” she added, referring to the BBC’s flagship morning news programme.

Huq’s comments were condemned by politicians from both main parties after the clip was published by the Guido Fawkes website on Tuesday.

She was subsequently suspended from the Labour Party, and lost the party whip.

Talking to LBC Radio on Wednesday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Huq’s comments were “racist” and “wrong,” and praised his party’s “very swift action” in suspending her membership.

‘Ill-Judged’

After the clip was published on Tuesday, Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry raised his “serious concerns” in a letter to the Labour leader and demanded Huq’s suspension.

“I trust you will join me in unequivocally condemning these comments as nothing less than racist and that the Labour whip be withdrawn from Rupa Huq as a consequence,” he wrote.

In response, a Labour spokesman said: “We obviously condemn the remarks she made. They are totally inappropriate and we would call on her to apologise and withdraw them.”

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner also told Huq to apologise and take “immediate action” over the “completely unacceptable” remarks.

Huq initially told the Guardian newspaper that she stood by the remarks and described criticism of her comments as being a “massive misunderstanding, wilfully.”

But she later said she had apologised to Kwarteng over the “ill-judged” comments.

She wrote on Twitter: “I have today contacted Kwasi Kwarteng to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies for the comments I made at yesterday’s Labour conference fringe meeting. My comments were ill-judged and I wholeheartedly apologise to anyone affected.”

PA Media contributed to this report.