Sir Keir Starmer has come under pressure to remove the Labour whip from backbench MP Dawn Butler after she appeared to share a tweet describing Kemi Badenoch as a “member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class”.
Ms Butler swiftly deleted her retweet of a post from Nigerian-British author Nels Abbey, which responded to the prospect of Ms Badenoch becoming Tory leader by describing “Badenochism” as “white supremacy in blackface”.
But she has been strongly criticised by Conservative figures, with several calling for her to lose the Labour whip.
This will be a test to see whether Keir Starmer removes the whip, or effectively condones Butler’s abhorrent approval of this smear
Ben Obese-Jecty, who was elected as MP for Huntingdon in July, said Ms Butler 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.”
But on Sunday night Labour showed no signs of removing the whip from Ms Butler.
Sir Keir has previously suspended the whip from Labour MPs in response to comments about senior black Conservative politicians.
In 2022, he suspended Rupa Huq from the party for describing then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as “superficially” black. Ms Huq apologised and had the whip restored six months later.
Other Labour figures, including Sir Keir and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, hailed Ms Badenoch’s election as the first black leader of a major UK party as a historic moment.
In later posts, Mr Abbey said his original comments had been “clearly satirical” and “intended as a sketch”, but defended Ms Butler saying she “may not welcome the ascendancy of an extremely right-wing reactionary black person”.
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).”
