Tory Islamophobia row: Warsi accuses Hancock of 'whitesplaining'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Sayeeda Warsi has denounced her Conservative party colleague Matt Hancock for “whitesplaining” Islamophobia to her after he suggested “there are others who take a more balanced approach” to the issue.

Lady Warsi responded furiously to Hancock, the health secretary, after his comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme while addressing the Conservative party’s decision not to hold an inquiry into Islamophobia.

Challenged on Warsi’s strident criticism of her own party’s record on discrimination against Muslims, Hancock had said: “Well look, I like Sayeeda. She has a particular view on this, there are others who take a more balanced approach.”

Asked if he was saying she was “unbalanced”, Hancock replied: “No, I’m certainly not saying that. I have an enormous amount of respect for Sayeeda but she does take a particular view.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/nov/09/tory-islamophobia-hancock-accused-of-trying-to-isolate-warsi

Link to tweet

I was a bit shocked at his glib dismissal. On a British political forum with all viewpoints that I post on, Islamophobia from the right is pretty common (though admittedly, most of it from people who are now Brexit Party supporters, though they used to be pro-Tory). For that matter, the antisemitism comes from the same people (just a few days ago, one of them complained that Jews control the BBC).

[Denzil_DC]

1. It's horrible to see racism of any sort used a electoral fodder.

Not that I believe that's what Warsi is doing here.

Johnson has now backtracked on an undertaking he sort of made in one of the leadership debates to conduct a party inquiry into Islamophobia (they're supposedly going to hold one into all forms of racism, but don't hold your breath, especially with the last year's influx of ex-UKIPers).

There are party political reasons for this. The BAME vote skews Labour in big conurbations. It's been commonplace during the last year's by-elections when Labour has held seats to see comments online about "dozens of [insert epithet here] living in the same house and the father tells the others how to vote" etc.

The last statistics we have show that not just Islamophobia, but anti-Semitism is more prevalent among Tories than Labour supporters. For some reason that's almost never an issue the media and certain prominent anti-racist activists hammer the Tories about.