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Priti Patel: I will not take lectures from Labour on racism

Priti Patel

Priti Patel was in the Commons today, to be asked about the policing of the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the country. And, it was an understatement to say that the Home Secretary was taking no prisoners when it came to accusations from Labour that she or the government did not understand racism in this country.

In response to Labour MP Florence Eshalomi – who asked whether the government and the Home Secretary recognised that there is racism and discrimination in the UK – Patel gave a remarkable speech in which she declared that she would ‘not take lectures’ from Labour about racism, and accused those who expect ethnic minorities to behave in a certain way as racist themselves.

The Home Secretary recounted the times she was called a ‘Paki’ growing up, the times she was racially abused in the street and how the Guardian portrayed her as a fat cow with a nose ring in a recent cartoon – ridiculing those who said she could not understand racism, before adding that there is no place in society for either racism or discrimination.

Watch the full speech here:

Later in the session, the Home Secretary was equally ruthless when it came to the subject of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. Asked by the Labour MP Zarah Sultana if she thought it right that Black Britons have to endure the presence of statues to slave traders, Patel pointed out that it was a Labour council who for years have been responsible for Colston’s statue:


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