Yvette Cooper has described a tweet linking Kemi Badenoch with ‘white supremacy in Blackface’ as appalling, after a Labour MP appeared to share it.
Dawn Butler is understood to have quickly removed her retweet of the post from Nigerian-British author Nels Abbey, but the sentiment has attracted strong criticism.
Several Conservative MPs have called for the Labour backbencher to lose the party whip over the row, which erupted shortly after Badenoch was announced as the new Tory leader.
The Home Secretary said she had not seen the post, but when it was read out to her on LBC, she said: ‘The words that you have read out are clearly appalling and I would strongly disagree with them.
‘So, I haven’t seen the post. I don’t know the circumstances around it but I think we should congratulate Kemi Badenoch on her election.’
Badenoch became the first Black person to lead a major UK party on Saturday, when it was announced she had beaten Robert Jenrick in the race for the job.
Other Labour figures, including Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, have hailed her election as a historic moment for the country.
Huntingdon MP Ben Obese-Jecty was among the Conservative figures who criticised Butler, saying she was ‘not alone on the Government benches in holding this view of Kemi’.
He said: ‘This will be a test to see whether Keir Starmer removes the whip, or effectively condones Butler’s abhorrent approval of this smear.’
Mr Abbey later said his post – which described Badenoch as ‘the most prominent member of white supremacy’s Black collaborator class’ – had been ‘clearly satirical’ and ‘intended as a sketch’.
He added: ‘Because of stuff like this, which is vehement political disagreement, it is both fair and to be expected that many black people may not view Badenoch as (leader of the opposition) to be a ‘proud moment for our nation’ in the same way as, say, Keir Starmer does (or is politically mandated to).’
In 2022, while Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir suspended Rupa Huq from Labour for saying then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was ‘superficially’ Black.
She apologised and was allowed back into the party after six months.
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