Kemi Badenoch has blasted senior Labour politicians and accused them of “insulting” black people over the Chris Kaba case.
The Tory leadership contender claims a left-wing “narrative” robbed them of their “agency and autonomy” by creating views where they “cannot be anything other than victims”.
Metropolitan Police firearms officer Martyn Blake was acquitted of murder by a jury at the Old Bailey after just three hours of deliberation on Monday.
Kaba, 24, was shot through the front windscreen of an Audi Q8 as tried to ram his way past police cars in Streatham on September 5, 2022.
When the case concluded, it emerged the drill rapper was a core member of the Brixton Hill-based 67 gang, one of London’s most dangerous, and the Audi was directly linked to three shootings in five months.
Kaba would have stood trial for the attempted murder of a rival at the Hackney’ Oval Space nightclub.
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Writing in The Times, Badenoch says statements by Labour figures, including London Sadiq Khan who sent his “heartfelt sympathies” to gangster Kaba’s family and friends, “all show the same thing”.
She said: “Too many of the predominantly left-wing ruling class still see black people as a homogeneous, monolithic bloc.
“It is insulting, reductive, patronising and discriminatory. The comments are just a new version of the old racist trope that all black people are the same and have the same thoughts.”
She called for the term “black community” to be “consigned to history”, commenting people should be defined by “their contribution as citizens, not by the colour of their skin”.
Meanwhile on Saturday, hundreds of people have gathered for a march in central London to protest over deaths in custody alongside the Justice for Chris Kaba campaign.
Activists gathered on the corner of Trafalgar Square and marched with United Families and Friends Campaign to Downing Street.
Five family members – including one relative of Kaba – arrived at Number 10 dressed in black with a hand-written note addressed to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
They knocked on the door and handed it to a security guard.
Sheeda Kaba, a cousin of Kaba, criticised Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s new measures on anonymity for firearms officers until conviction.
Speaking to media, she said: “All that said to us was that we’re tightening the protection of officers because there could never be another officer that gets this far, going to trial.
“So it’s almost like we’re being punished because my cousin’s case got that far within two years. So (with) the smear campaign by the media it’s like we’re dying a second death.
“First they took Chris and now they want to take us. But talking on behalf of my family, we will not be silenced.
“We’re gonna carry on saying Chris’s name. They might’ve got a verdict but we’re gonna continue exposing the corruption.”
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is reviewing whether Mr Blake, 40, should still face disciplinary proceedings.
