Clive Lewis and his Ku Klux Klamnesia

Oh dear. Onetime Labour leadership hopeful Clive Lewis, the soft left’s answer to Richard Burgon, has waded into the Sewell Report row with his usual tact, guile and diplomacy.

Responding to an Independent headline which read: ‘No proof of institutional racism, claims key report’, Lewis, a former shadow defence secretary, tweeted a picture of a Ku Klux Klan member standing in front of a burning cross with the caption: ‘Move along. Nothing to see here #RaceReport’ adding in a subsequent tweet: ‘To be crystal clear this image represents structural racism. Just so we’re clear.’

Lewis clearly has a short memory about who the KKK’s electoral preferences in Britain. In 2015 Grand Wizard David Duke hailed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership victory as a way to stop Jews from running Britain, claiming the Islington MP would help his cause find ‘sunshine in the world’ and that ‘it’s a really good kind of evolutionary thing, isn’t it, when people are beginning to recognise Zionist power and ultimately the Jewish establishment power in Britain and in the Western World.’

Move along. Nothing to see here. #RaceReport https://t.co/5zy1fBIpGe pic.twitter.com/hu4bDGmoeE

— Clive Lewis MP (@labourlewis) March 31, 2021

Two years later, Duke doubled down claiming Corbyn was ‘very, very strong, certainly more than any other person that I know of in politics in Britain. He’s been against these insane Zionist wars, so the Zionists hate his guts, even though there’s a lot of commie Zionists that are very, very communist and they act like they’re anti-Zionists but there you go. They’re not.’ With endorsements like these…

At least Lewis is merely a backbencher. Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy meanwhile was yesterday insistent that the UK is indeed institutionally racist, irrespective of the findings of the report. An interesting judgement, given that Steerpike remembers only one major political party being found guilty of breaking the law by failing to prevent ‘acts of harassment and discrimination.’