Labour Party Conference: Too Many ‘White Men’ Speaking, Members Told

A delegate in the audience wearing a face masks listen during the opening day of the annua
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Too many white men were speaking at the Labour Party conference, according to a National Executive Committee member, who called on white men to step aside and allow ethnic minorities to speak.

The left-wing Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton on Sunday was apparently marred by too many white men asking for a chance to speak on issue surrounding housing and transport.

Mark Ferguson, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, said per the Press Association news wire service: “I am afraid, and I am not speaking from a position of particular strength here, there are too many white men putting their hands up.”

“I am not anti-white men, some of my favourite people are – my dad’s a white man,” he added to reported laughter from the crowd.

“But I do not want white men to exclusively dominate this or any other debate at this conference and following on from my comrade in the chair this morning, I do wish to see the diversity of the hall reflected.

“I’m not putting anybody on the spot here, but if you want to speak do not be afraid to put your hand up, we want to hear from you, this is an inclusive conference.”

Contrary to the claims of inclusivity, a Labour Party MP, Rosie Duffield, said that she would not even attend the conference over safety concerns. The feminist MP revealed that she has received many threats from the “woke” wing of her party over her stance against transgender people using female only spaces.

Ironically, the conference has so far been dominated by comments from deputy Labour Party leader and Jeremy Corbyn acolyte, Angela Rayner, who described Conservatives as bigotted “scum” in a meeting of leftist activists on Saturday.

According to the Daily Mirror, she said: “I’m sick of shouting from the sidelines, and I bet youse lot are too. We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, mysoginistic, absolute pile… of banana republic… Etonian… piece of scum… and I held back a little… that I have ever seen in my life.

Despite considerable backlash against the statements, Ms Rayner said that she would only apologise if Prime Minister Boris Johnson retracts the unidentified homophobic, racist, and mysoginistic comments.

She told Sky News that she was trying convey in a “passionate way” the “anger and frustration that people feel when you have a prime minister, who has said things and not apologised that are racist, that are misogynistic, that are homophobic, that has given billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to their mates and literally wasted that money”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who is struggling to keep the reigns on the far-left of his party, said that he would not have used such language and would “talk to her later”.

Responding to the outburst from Rayner, Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden said: “At a time when the country is trying to pull together to recover from Covid, the last thing we need is the deputy leader of the Labour Party calling people ‘scum’ and yelling insults.

“We need to make politics better, not drag it into the gutter.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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