Yes, I’ve been called a “coconut”. When Marieha Hussain wrote the word on a placard she carried on a Palestine march last November, it was to deride Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, the then prime minister and home secretary, for their obnoxious immigration policies and their support for Israel’s war in Gaza. But it is a term used also to disparage those on the left whose political views are deemed too “white”.
Hussain’s placard, one side of which depicted the faces of Sunak and Braverman superimposed on coconuts under a palm tree, landed her in court, charged with a racially aggravated public order offence. Last week she was cleared, the judge accepting it as legitimate “political satire”.
