Tories are wrong to imply that Starmer is racist

Is it really some kind of underhand racist smear for Labour to claim that Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t get Britain’? This is the charge being laid by No. 10 staffers at the door of the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who made the accusation during the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year on Wednesday.

Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, whose parents came from India in the 1970s, told a radio interviewer that she was prepared to give Starmer the ‘benefit of the doubt’ that the remark ‘wasn’t about race’. She then went on to add that ‘only he can know what he is implying’, while somehow  making it perfectly obvious that there was no real doubt in her mind about what Starmer meant in saying Sunak didn’t ‘get Britain’. In case anyone is in any doubt about what the Conservatives think Starmer is up to, a Downing Street spokesman made things plain enough: ‘I guess what I would say is, you know, the PM’s as British as Starmer.’ Who says he isn’t though? Certainly not the Labour leader. This is wretched stuff from the Conservatives, tantamount to playing the ‘race card’, the very kind of fake identity politics that would do the Labour party proud.  

A spokesman for Starmer was quick to deny that his attack on the Prime Minister was ‘dog whistle’ politics, emphasising that the Labour leader was merely seeking to make the point that Sunak doesn’t get ‘the reality of life facing people’. That seems fair enough. It was a political attack, standard knockabout stuff, rather than something more sinister. In fact, during PMQs, Starmer also laid into Sunak over his wealth, lambasting him for being an out of touch ‘Mr Nobody’.

The comments offered fertile territory aplenty for a Tory line of attack rather than some manufactured row about racism. Starmer could be accused of  a puerile attack on Sunak, merely because of his wealth, sentiments that reek of nothing more than envy and resentment. A clever Tory line might have been to highlight the absurdity of Starmer, of all people, attacking his political opponent as a ‘Mr Nobody’, and of having the gall to accuse Sunak of ‘flip-flopping’ on policy. But to suggest Starmer was guilty of some kind of racial slur simply won’t wash. It smacks of desperation and does the wider reputation of politicians and political parties no good at all. 

The trading of insults is part and parcel of political life: there is plenty of cruelty involved and on occasion politicians can go too far and say something they may later regret. If anything, the parliamentary exchanges between Sunak and Starmer are tame stuff, reflecting how sanitised parliamentary debate has become. It really isn’t good for democracy for political leaders of any party to be scared off attacking their opponents, for fear that someone might accuse them of some imaginary offence, racial or otherwise. The Conservatives should know better than to pursue this form of low-grade identity politics.