Rupa Huq suspended as Labour MP after Kwarteng commentson September 27, 2022 at 3:20 pm

Labour MP Rupa Huq has been suspended from the parliamentary party pending an investigation after she called the chancellor “superficially” black.

Speaking about Kwasi Kwarteng at a party conference fringe event, Ms Huq also said: “If you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn’t know he’s black.”

Tory Party chair Jake Berry called her comments racist and disgusting.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said the remarks were “unacceptable”.

Speaking to the BBC’s Politics Live programme, she said Ms Huq should apologise, while the party’s foreign affairs spokesman David Lammy described the remarks as “unfortunate” adding: “I wouldn’t have made them myself.”

Ms Huq, who will now sit in Parliament as an independent MP, has yet to respond to the BBC’s request for a comment.

The Ealing Central and Acton MP was recorded making the comments on Monday evening at a fringe event entitled What’s Next for Labour’s Agenda on Race.

The audio clip was published by the Guido Fawkes website minutes before Sir Keir Starmer began his speech to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.

During a Q&A session, she said: “He’s superficially, he’s, a black man but again he’s got more in common… he went to Eton, he went to a very expensive prep school, all the way through top schools in the country.

“If you hear him on the Today programme you wouldn’t know he’s black.”

Mr Kwarteng, who became chancellor earlier this month, was born in east London and has Ghanaian heritage.

Former chancellor and Tory MP Sajid Javid said he was “appalled and saddened” by the clip adding: “Rather than give encouragement to racists and people who seek to divide us, she should know better. Not too late for her to show that she does.”

In a letter to Sir Keir, Mr Berry urged the Labour leader to “join me in unequivocally condemning these comments as nothing less than racist”.

The Conservative Party chair also labelled her words as “vile” and “disgusting”.