Chuka Umunna

Chuka Umunna Plays The Race Card

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Chuka Umunna - UKIP- Nigel Farage - Immigration - Race Card - General Election 2015

 

There are few more toxic accusations in British public life than that of racism.

To be accused of racism by anyone with a high profile and a media platform is the modern day equivalent of being tarred and feathered – the allegations stick indelibly in the public memory, impossible to scrub away, while everything you do subsequently will be viewed suspiciously through that ugly, distorting prism – “he may have only said X, but we all know he really means Y, because he’s a racist”.

Consequently, decent and honourable people should be damn sure of their facts before throwing the word “racist” around – it summons visceral recollections and images of real-life prejudice, discrimination, attacks and lynchings, murders and even genocides; the Jim Crow laws in America and the spectre of Enoch Powell in Britain.

Unfortunately, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, has once again demonstrated that he is neither honourable nor decent, using an interview with the Independent on Sunday as a free opportunity to throw some more mud at UKIP ahead of polling day next week:

Nigel Farage and Ukip “hate modern Britain” and have a “problem with race”, Chuka Umunna says in an interview withThe Independent on Sunday.

The shadow business secretary, whose father was born in Nigeria, responded to the Ukip leader’s description of two of Ukip’s spokesmen as “fully black” and “half black” by saying there is a “virus of racism” that runs through Mr Farage’s party. Mr Umunna added that, by contrast, a Labour government would celebrate British multiculturalism and refuse to bow to “anti-immigration sentiment”, which, he said, had been whipped up by Ukip.

Mr Umunna was speaking during a visit to the Croydon Central constituency, where Labour’s candidate Sarah Jones is hoping to overturn a Conservative majority of 2,879 currently held by Gavin Barwell. He mounted a staunch defence of the benefits of immigration to the UK, although refused to condemn the Labour Party mug that trumpeted “Controls on Immigration”.

Put simply, Chuka Umunna’s latest “smoking gun” evidence of endemic UKIP racism and prejudice consists of the fact that Nigel Farage used the terms “fully black” and “half black” when speaking about people shown in the UKIP manifesto.

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Forget David Cameron’s Successor – Who Will Replace Ed Miliband?

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

David Cameron Breakfast Cereal Terms Are Like Shredded Wheat 2

 

And so, with a confusing breakfast cereal metaphor, David Cameron announced in an interview with the BBC’s James Landale that he would not seek to run for a third term as Prime Minister should he cling on to the post at the 2015 general election.

From James Landale’s own analysis:

David Cameron’s admission that he will not serve a third term in Downing Street will provoke a flurry of speculation. What was he hoping to achieve? What message was he trying to send?

First things first. I asked him a question and he answered it. It was not something that a helpful Downing Street official had suggested I might ask with a heavy hint that I might get an interesting answer. It was just one of many speculative questions that political journalists like me ask in the hope that just occasionally they might get an answer. And this time it did.

Second, Mr Cameron’s overt aim was to get across the message that he would serve a full second term. He wants to quash speculation that he might stand down early in 2017 after a referendum on the UK’s EU membership.

But by emphasising that he would do another five years, he inevitably has to address what he would do after that. And his answer was clear. Terms in Downing Street, he said, are like Shredded Wheat: “two are wonderful, three might just be too many.”

This is all very interesting, and certainly we should keep an eye on what might happen in the year 2020 and beyond. There is already plenty of good analysis off the back of David Cameron’s off-the-cuff revelation, from the Spectator here, the Times of London here and here, the Guardian here, and Conservative Home here.

But of far more interest than who will be jockeying for position to replace David Cameron (a largely uninspiring field of Theresa May, George Osborne and the unthinkable Boris Johnson) is the more pressing question: who will replace Ed Miliband if Labour lose the election on 7 May?

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Chuka Umunna Is Not The Answer To UKIP, Or Labour’s Leadership Crisis

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Chuka Umunna Labour Party Champagne Socialist 2

 

David Cameron has his fair share of problems, with Nigel Farage’s UKIP nipping at his heels and EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker goading him about Britain’s £1.7 billion EU surcharge. Nick Clegg faces a daily battle to fend off irrelevancy and the implosion of his party. But despite their tribulations, I doubt that either man would volunteer to switch places with the hapless Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband.

The Spectator sums up Miliband’s woes in their sketch of yesterday’s PMQs:

The Labour leader needed a win today. Badly. His poll ratings have dipped to the same level as Gordon Brown’s in 2010, but at least Brown had the excuse of being in a fag-end administration led by a scowling narcissistic tax-junkie.

Indeed. It’s one thing to have terrible personal ratings when you are an establishment figure associated with a party that has been in power for over a decade, but – wait a second, Ed Miliband was all of those things, and still he was installed as the Labour Party leader. The consolation would be that his personal ratings couldn’t possibly fall much further if he did win power and occupy 10 Downing Street, if only the chances of that happy event were not receding quite so rapidly.

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