To wonder why there's no BBC Panorama documentary into racism in the Tory party?

Yes loads of racism in the first party to have a non white leader and has plenty of non white and female ministers. Guess haters gotta hate

Goodness me.
I can only hope he finds a trusty donor with a helicopter.
Or gets the RAF to pitch in.

I've just googled 'Keir Starmer expenses scandal' - not the result I was expecting;

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-expenses-chauffeur-driven-car-b2319779.html

cardibach
That’s all quite a long time ago now though, isn’t it?

You were the one who mentioned the early 1980s!!
My links from 2011 - 2013 are much more recent than that.

Edit: the last Labour bloke there already wasn’t an MP by the time he was caught.

He was an independent MP when he was first arrested on suspicion of fraud although not charged at that time. He resigned from Labour;

A Labour party spokesman said: "We’re disappointed Jared has decided to resign from Labour after we won the Sheffield Hallam seat from Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems last year.
"We wish him well for the future."

Yes, I remember it. I also remember them being investigated and dumped from the Party, never mind government. There’s just no consequence for the current lot.
You do t seem to get it - I object to corruption whoever it comes from. If someone breaks the rules/the law or is corrupt, I want them to receive some consequence. That’s all quite a long time ago now though, isn’t it?
Edit: the last Labour bloke there already wasn’t an MP by the time he was caught.

Yes, I remember it well, excellent investigative journalism from the Telegraph.
I also recall the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, announcing that the CPS would prosecute MPs & peers. Really quite shocking at the time.

I doubt people would be as shocked today. Perhaps a sign of the times.

You don't remember the 2009 expenses scandal?

Five Labour MPs/former Labour MPs were subsequently jailed for fraud/false accounting - a sixth Labour MP only escaped conviction/prison because she had a mental health breakdown from the shame of being found out:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/may/20/mps-expenses-elliot-morley-sentenced
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20248915
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jan/07/david-chaytor-jailed-mps-expenses
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/mar/31/jim-devine-sentenced-expenses-fruad
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/feb/10/mps-expenses-eric-illsley-sentence
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25492017

(I think two Conservative peers were also prosecuted).

Not forgetting that Labour's Jared O'Mara was jailed for fraud last year;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64577552

Thanks @Valeriekat, all together now . . . Jeremy Corbyn, Keir's beer with curry, Michael Foot's coat, Sadiq Khan, Angela Rayner . . . 🍺

They don't investigate because they are understandably worried about being punished by the government.

Where?

Angela Raynor isn't exactly covering herself in glory either.

What that Tory donor is alleged to have said is vile, if true. I hope there is some action DA can take if things are as reported. At least it would be out in the open, and for public scrutiny. Diane Abbott is alleged to receive lots of vile targeting of abuse. I suspect quite a few women MP’s receive abuse, even if some people pretend to not know what a woman is. Put racial abuse on top in DA’s case, and I suspect she is the target of creeps who gleefully heap on even worse abuse. It must be devastating.

The remarks that DA wrote, claiming Jewish people didn’t face racism, only ‘prejudice like redheads’ is a separate issue. I don’t agree with her on that, and think diminishing the hatred of anti-semitism is dangerous and disingenuous.

There is nothing unlawful in sending an asylum seeker to have their claim processed by a third country. In principle it could be Rwanda, it could be anywhere.

The courts did not find the scheme to be lawful. This was because of the risk of refoulement - that is, a person being sent back to a country where they will be persecuted. In effect this amounted to Rwanda being an unsafe country for the purposes of third-country asylum processing. But this is not to say a person definitely will be sent back to their country to be harmed. It doesn’t even mean they are more likely than not. It just means there was a “reasonable likelihood” of refoulement, which legally is a very low threshold. The Government are trying to resolve these concerns by a new treaty with Rwanda to obtain the assurances the court asked for.

On the safety of Rwanda itself, the fact that we accept Rwandan refugees is not relevant as there will be particular reasons pertinent to those claims that won’t apply to non-Rwandans being sent there to be processed.

I’m not necessarily a supporter of the scheme by the way, but it is important to understand what it is and how it works.

And I do not accept that the scheme is evidence of Tory racism. Happy to hear an explanation of how it is.

The issue was one around assurances that they wouldn’t then be sent back to their home country to be persecuted.
Actually, the issue is that Rwanda is not a same place to start with. Anyway, why is the UK taking in Rwandan refugees, if it is?
Revealed: UK granted asylum to Rwandan refugees while arguing country was safe | Migration | The Guardian

Please, I’m not arguing that any racism is unimportant. I’m just trying to be proportionate with the comparisons and not let a partisan hatred of the Tories affect my judgement.

The Windrush scandal was a monstrous injustice. The independent report into the scandal didn’t actually find it was an example of institutional racism - it was an “institutional thoughtlessness” about issues of race, still serious enough but closer to bungling incompetence. And hostile environment policies had a long history too - Labour do not get off scot-free either.

On Rwanda, the courts actually found that it was perfectly lawful to send an asylum seeker to another country to have their claim assessed there. The issue was one around assurances that they wouldn’t then be sent back to their home country to be persecuted. Whatever issues one can have with the scheme - its cost, its workability - I honestly can’t see how racism comes into it, and it is legitimate to attempt to manage the problem of people illegally entering the country.

Okay, so according to you the Windrush scandal which resulted in harassment of the elderly, detention, deportation, lost money, lost jobs, lost homes is less of a problem than the institutional antisemitism in the Labour Party. Now I’m not saying the latter is not a problem, but I don’t know how anybody could reasonably argue that the actual destruction of lives that has come about because of Tory policy is unimportant.

When a policy is deemed by multiple courts to be illegal it cannot also be a legitimate consideration. Come on now.

"A few Alf Garnetts" is seriously downplaying the racism and xenophobia in the Tory party.

I do live in the UK. The UK is my country. I’m pointing out that there is no equivalence in scale between the institutional anti-Semitism in Labour and on the left more generally, and the racism of the Tories, which amounts to a few old dinosaurs blurting out racist words. Still a problem, but not remotely on the same scale.

I also think we need to disentangle the problem of racism, and its consequences, from controversial policies such as the Rwanda scheme that you may not agree with but which are, at least, a matter of legitimate consideration to deal with a policy challenge.

What?

That was for your benefit…

Starmer has taken action to clean up the anti-Semitic poison of the Corbyn era but this doesn’t go away overnight. The problem isn’t a few bad apples - it’s deep-rooted. Racism exists everywhere but there are specific times and places where it can be more and less virulent. At the moment it is on the left. I don’t think the problem of a few Alf Garnetts in the Tories is remotely on the same scale.

Oh crikey.

I have just realised the OP has not been back to the thread. This is a wind them up and watch them go, rather than an attempt at starting a serious discussion about racism in the Tory party.

Labour are infected by visceral anti-Semitism

Do you have some examples of Starmer's anti-Semitism, or the current front bench?

Or do you mean the party membership as a whole? In which case there will be anti-Semites within that membership, just as there are in all walks of life, sadly. Including the Tory party membership.

"Let’s not play oppression olympics."

I’m not sure I understand the point about conspiracy theories. This is just my opinion. Labour are infected by visceral anti-Semitism. This is often met with “but look, the Tories are racist and Islamophobia though”, as if the problem is of the same scale. Racism exists across society and in all parties. But in only one main party is it institutionalised.

I do think that what Hester said was racist though and the Tories’ handling of the situation has been weak.