But the racist lines from someone of her influence who’s of ethnic minority in the UK with immigrant parents is what I don’t understand.
Most small boat arrivals, for example, are not of Indian heritage. There really is no particular reason why Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman, all of Indian heritage, should feel a particularly strong affinity towards them.
Indeed as Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman, are all of East African Indian heritage there is reason to believe that there may exist some racial animosity.
People of Indian heritage in East Africa were very much seen as privileged stooges of British imperialism, when independence came they often became the victims of extreme hostility, including mass expulsions.
Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman, all share privileged lifestyles, the fact that their ancestors might have suffered discrimination at the hands of white Europeans does not guarantee that they themselves cannot be guilty of prejudice and bigotry towards others.
Just look at the role of Afrikaners in Apartheid South Africa or Jewish settlers in occupied territories for similar examples.
People of Indian heritage in East Africa were very much seen as privileged stooges of British imperialism, when independence came they often became the victims of extreme hostility, including mass expulsions.
I don't know about the others, but that was certainly how Priti Patels parents ended up in the UK, which makes her attitude particularly brutal and stone-hearted. She's not just the child of immigrants (like a lot of us) but of refugees escaping persecution
binners
Full MemberIts a very dangerous game she’s playing by courting far right thugs. They would love to get rid of all the men of ****stani Muslim heritage, but you’d have to be hopelessly naive to think they’d stop there
Dangerous but endlessly appealing. It's the same thing as some jewish people thinking that anti-arab racists are allies, rather than just racists who're temporarily pointed at someone else. Or women, the daily mail and trans rights. You might think you can use just that little bit of hatred and fear to your own benefit but all you're really doing is growing it and legitimising it.
Somewhat unironically, racists exist in all walks of life and races.
Sad but true.
"People of Indian heritage in East Africa were very much seen as privileged stooges of British imperialism, when independence came they often became the victims of extreme hostility, including mass expulsions."
There was an excellent BBC4 documentary a while back where a young girl whose parents had been refugees from Uganda interviewed people from that generation who had settled here.
The first 3/4 of the programme mapped their progress since their arrival. In the final part she asked them how they had treated the locals when they were in Uganda. There was a lot of looking at the floor...
Rishis' story is quite different, British passports were offered to Indian Kenyans, thinking a similar situation to that which was occurring in Uganda could occur in Kenya. In the end that didn't happen and the Indian Kenyans were recognised an official Kenyan tribe.
That's the lottery of colonialism for you and it worked out pretty well for Rishi and his family, right of abode on several different continents coupled with the fact that upon independence, 75% of the non agricultural wealth was in the hands of Indian Kenyans despite them only making up only 2% of the population.
You'd have thunk that Pritti, Suella and Rishi would have shown some sensitivity towards this rather sensitive history? Yet they choose to double down on the racism.
And the recent attack on Muslims is much more dangerous than many people realise. I wonder how many of those British Indians who celebrated Sunaks' ascension expected him to exacerbate the tensions between the hindu and muslim communities?
@inkster I have looked on aghast as the Muslims have been demonised. It offends my live and let live British upbringing (well except for the Norfolk Types 😆 ). We don't need the sectarian problems of India in our back yard.
"We don’t need the sectarian problems of India in our back yard"
I'm afraid they're already here.
Last year there was some serious unrest in Leicester in relation to events in India. The Indian ambassador to the UK threw flames on the fire, publicly placing all the blame on the Muslim community. Our government said nothing.
It's worth remembering that the last time Prime Minister Modi visited the UK he had to quickly jump on a plane home before conducting the meetings he had scheduled. He was concerned that he was about to be arrested for genocide, he had just been banned from entering the United States and was worried that a European arrest warrant was about to be issued.
A decade ago when he was governor of Gujarat, he initiated a three day pogrom against Gujurati Muslims, where his religious militia kiled hundreds of muslims with the assistanceof of the police. Lovely chap and good mates with Putin.
We've seen Baroness Warsi call out her own party and Sajid Javed has been marginalised (probably because he was one of the few Tories to criticise the culture war nonsense.) I'm guessing the Conservative Party has concluded they don't need the Muslim vote,
The Tory’s know that the next election is as good as lost already
I wish I shared your conviction.
Photo of Suella Braverman in this BBC article was well timed 👌
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-65297070
A truly brilliant article here :
For entertainment value obviously.
It turns out that Suella Braverman is a victim of bigotry and racism from the Left, the Guardian, Tory "wets", and apparently, bizarrely, Lenny Henry.
You don't get much better than that.
LOL Dan Wootton the "acceptable" face of white supremacy. Funny he doesn't follow his own advice when it comes to Meghan Windsor
I grew up in Grays. It was a crappy place to grow up. Was a crappy place to live. Kept away from most of the pubs, preferred the snooker hall.
My uncle still lives there. Big house. Broken into five, maybe six times over the years. Not nice.
Would never move back there.
However, I'm glad someone made a point of smashing that pub.
Grays, as with most towns along the estuary, has seen(/always has had) a large influx of people coming from east London. That's ultimately why my old man and uncle lived there.
Now a lot of those leaving London are black and lots of them have settled in Grays.
Glad that someone is sticking it to the racists.
A truly brilliant article here
Fair play to them. They got ‘woke agenda’ into the first sentence. 😂
https://twitter.com/william_wragg/status/1649571213801398272?s=21
https://twitter.com/william_wragg/status/1649577608756207616?s=21
https://twitter.com/william_wragg/status/1649580988635271175?s=21
https://twitter.com/william_wragg/status/1649581983700320258?s=21
Another blow to the labour shortage by Cruella, that’s bound to be a huge help to the UK economy where the latest figures for unfilled positions is 1.2 million…
https://twitter.com/suellabraverman/status/1650573225703665664?s=46&t=1lK7Dw1b6RqGJyvufO-trQ
From Yorkshire Bylines. We knew that Braverman was sharing her confidential brief with a degenerate Tory dinosaur, but the links to Christian Nationalist money from the US (and possibly other origins too) come as no surprise.
but the links to Christian Nationalist money from the US (and possibly other origins too) come as no surprise.
Personally, I prefer to call them Nationalist Christians, or Nat-C’s, they even have their own flag:

Or there’s this one - can’t make up my mind which one works better…
…or worse, depending on one’s point of view, of course. I’m wondering how long it is before these, actual Nazi Christian flags get adopted by Americans finally showing their true colours, as it were.

This comment in that link is very misleading:
Despite Suella Braverman’s devotion to the Triratna Order, a controversial religious sect founded by a sexual predator
It is not a controversial religious sect, it is a Buddhist order and its founder was the Buddha. Yes Dennis Lingwood was by all accounts something of a sexual predator, who should have faced justice, but that doesn't have any bearing on the current members of the order.
Last week it was reported that the Dalai Lama behaved in a thoroughly unacceptable way, it might have changed my perception of the Dalai Lama but it certainly hasn't changed my perception of Tibetan Buddhists.
I know members of the Triratna Order very well because although I am not in any way a Buddhist the local Triratna Buddhist Centre is in walking distance from me and I usually attend yoga and meditation there on a weekly basis.
I don't get involved in any overtly religious stuff but I obviously get some of the flavour of Buddhism from attending led meditation in the shrine room. I have got to know them well and have done voluntary building work for them (which involved working, eating, etc as part of their community).
They are thoroughly decent people and how Suella Braverman is a member is a complete mystery to me. She seems to represent the very antithesis of what they stand for........metta bhavana/loving-kindness? FFS
This comment in that link is very misleading:
...a controversial religious sect founded by a sexual predator
Yes Dennis Lingwood was by all accounts something of a sexual predator
So what did I miss?
And what about the rest of the piece?
So what did I miss?
I thought my comment was pretty self-explanatory. The Triratna Order is a fairly standard Buddhist organisation which follows the teachings of Buddha, there is nothing controversial about it unless you believe that Buddhism is controversial. And I would not describe it as a sect.
I fully accept there is evidence that Dennis Lingwood did not totally follow the Buddhist teachings which he was so responsible for disseminating, but I don't accept that this necessarily is a reflection on current practicing Buddhists.
Are there any Triratna Buddhists that defend the sexual behaviour of Dennis Lingwood? I doubt it.
I think therefore that the comment in the link is misleading because imo it paints a misleading picture of Triratna Buddhists. They are not a weird sect of sex perverts imo, they are fairly mainstream Buddhists.
I didn't bother reading much beyond that comment. I know nothing about Christian Nationalists in the USA and everything they say about them might well be true.
HTH
She doesn't do details does she?
Good interview. She’s the one announcing all this stuff, yet she can’t answer questions about her own initiatives any better than a random down the pub.
^^^
She doesn't have to because these so-called policies amount to little more than virtue* signalling to a nasty tendency in our society. It is all designed to disguise the failure of this nationalist experiment and push Starmer into a pronouncement about international law and thus out himself as a supposed woke lefty.
This is the level, folks. A sad indictment of a first world nation.
*where hatred of foreigners is considered a virtue.
FFS she is really doubling down on the demonisation of desperate people from overseas;
“I think that the people coming here illegally do possess values which are at odds with our country.
We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution."
It's not illegal to claim asylum in the UK. The previous Tory Home Secretary's parents did precisely that.
And aren't there laws concerning inciting hatred and hate crimes, how is she getting away with it? Surely she must be on the very edge of what is legal?
Would I get away with publicly declaring that people of East African Asian heritage don't share British values and have heightened levels of criminality?
I am fairly certain that would be classed as a hate speech. I don't know why no one is testing the legality of Braverman's public statements.
Minister yesterday was making it clear that there would be checks needed to make sure we were only allowing people with the right documentation onto the rescue flights out of Sudan.....
I also genuinely wonder where some of her comments stand with regard to promoting hatred. I would love someone to test it....
I'm tempted to call the cops and report her for hate speech. After all, if you witness a crime then it's your duty to report it to the police. British values and all that.
And aren’t there laws concerning inciting hatred and hate crimes, how is she getting away with it? Surely she must be on the very edge of what is legal?
If we wait patiently, the current Home Secretary is sufficiently over-confident that she will make a mistake and stray across the line.
I see 'Honest Bob' Jenrick has also been weighing in with similar inflammatory language to Braverman, that not too long ago would have been the exclusive territory of the BNP, Tommy Robinson and Britain First
https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/status/1651169481828229121?s=20
If we wait patiently, the current Home Secretary is sufficiently over-confident that she will make a mistake and stray across the line.
Judging by the way that she keeps ratcheting it up it does seem that way.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service a hate crime is defined as :
'Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.'
Talking of people not sharing British values and being guilty of high levels of criminality must be getting very close to the definition of "hostility or prejudice".
This is the line that Burnham took in the mayoral election - not as extreme but the same sentiment.
Burnham said, or implied, that refugees from overseas do not share British values and are guilty of high levels of criminality?
Got a link?
‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick
Presumably accepted British values include conspiring with a tory donor to illegally evade tax on a housing development? Then admit to the illegality (only after being caught, obvs) whilst retaining your seat as a MP and remaining in ministerial positions?
Right you are Bob. If you don't mind, I'll be the judge of what I consider British values.
I think Burnham saying that while it's an overall good, recognising that immigration has different effects in different places is a world away from the Tories and Braverman's current outpourings isn't it?
I read those comments from 2016 and honestly it's like a glimpse into a forgotten calmer more pleasant place when compared to now, and I remember how upset folks were back then about what Burnham said.
I can't find it in the mainstream media now. It was obvious at the time. This from the independent is clearly slanted but even so
Claiming immigrants undermine communtity cohesion and wanting to refuse asylum seekers to come to manchester.
Clear dog whistle racism
Sunak, Patel and Braverman represent the most agregious example of gaslighting we have ever seen, they're a UK version of Clayton Bigsby (Dave Chappelle character).
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whose the fairest, of them all.
And if anyone thinks that I am implying that they adhere to a hierarchy of complexions then let me be clear, I am not implying it, I am stating it. Let's be clear their ancestors went to Africa to administer a regime based on exactly that.
Perhaps that's how they see their role in shaping a post Brexit Britain?
And Jenrick? He's basically just described Sudanese refugees as 'canibals'.
<div class="bbp-reply-content">
I think Burnham saying that while it’s an overall good, recognising that immigration has different effects in different places is a world away from the Tories and Braverman’s current outpourings isn’t it?
I read those comments from 2016 and honestly it’s like a glimpse into a forgotten calmer more pleasant place when compared to now, and I remember how upset folks were back then about what Burnham said.
</div>
Much milder yes but the same sentiment Ta for remembering tho that it happened. too many folk try to deny Burnham ever did this
He thought he might lose the mayoral election and blew his dogwhistle to attract more votes. Pure cynical move.
tj, Since learning that the phrase 'mainstream Media" was introduced into the lexicon by Joseph Goebbels it try not to use it anymore.
Except when the opportunity arises to point out that the phrase was invented by Joseph Goebels!
TJ first of all Labour governments have always supported immigration controls, certainly in modern times, which is completely reasonable imo.
And secondly Labour governments have always supported racist immigration and nationality laws, which in contrast is totally unacceptable imo.
https://novaramedia.com/2019/03/03/no-labour-hasnt-always-been-an-anti-racist-party/
However I have never seen equal comparison of racism within the Labour Party with racism in the Tory Party. Which helps to explain why so many brown and black people tend to vote Labour rather than Tory.
I don't think that the level of bigotry from ethnic minority Tories has an equivalent in the Labour Party. I think that a racist ethnic minority Tory politician is a very special kind of creature.
and wanting to refuse asylum seekers to come to manchester.
Hmmm, I remember him saying that it was time to spread the load more evenly, as the local effects of immigration were having on small, poor communities with little resource, and that Manchester had shouldered much of the burden already. I don't remember him actual saying he wanted to refuse them, although I do remember people suggesting that's what he'd said. Again though, still a world away from the hateful rhetoric of Braverman which @ernie rightly says is as close to hate speech as I've ever heard a Home Secretary saying in my lifetime
Edit; I'm happy to be proved wrong though if you remember different?
I agree with what you say Ernie.
However I have never seen equal comparison of racism within the Labour Party with racism in the Tory Party.
I clearly said a milder version of the same thing. Not that it was equal.
However the rhetoric from Burnham whilst much milder was for the same purpose - as a dog whistle to racists to get them to vote for him. Carefully said so as to be deniable but it was very clear what he was doing. it was in the mayoral election and the polls showed he might lose. It was clearly calculated as a dogwhistle IMO
Same sentiment for the same purpose as Braverman but much less extreme ( Actually Braverman might believe it.) I don't think Burham is actually racist but he clearly made a conscious decision to make that statement to get support from racists - and it worked
Nickc - it was the timing that made it obvious and he used his words carefully for deniability but IMO it was clear what he was doing
anyway - back to the delightful Braverman
"Claiming immigrants undermine communtity cohesion and wanting to refuse asylum seekers to come to manchester."
Someone on here was posting about a school teacher from North Manchester saying that since African refugees and migrants had moved to the area, school open days had been jam packed with parents demanding to know how well their offspring were doing? demanding that their maths skills were up to scratch no doubt..
If you are making schools better then how can you be damaging social cohesion?
Likewise in Ordsall (Salford) near to where I live, a once feral, almost whites only sink estate, (that you couldn't cycle past without having things thrown at you) has become a far more civilised (and prosperous) place since arrival of immigrants from overseas.
Perhaps the fear on Burnhams part was that Manchester has always been a red castle protected by a red wall and as tthe red wall had just crumbled, he was looking to prop up the castle's foundations by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I don’t think Burham is actually racist but he clearly made a conscious decision to make that statement to get support from racists – and it worked
So you don't think Andy Burnham is a racist but you think the voters of Manchester are!
I have just checked and in the last two Manchester mayoral elections and the combined UKIP/Reform UK/English Democrat vote was about 4% or less.
That's not what I expect from a hardcore racist city. Although as Andy Burnham won so easily maybe he got all the racist votes?
the phrase ‘mainstream Media” was introduced into the lexicon by Joseph Goebbels
Sounds like bobbins to me. I can't see a plausible source for the claim, beyond a couple of guys in Twitter saying that Ian Hislop said it.
