Report: Labour has its own role in this climate of hate and racism | Letters

The Guardian — Opinion has covered a development concerning “Report: Labour has its own role in this climate of hate and racism | Letters,” with the available account limited to the facts included in the supplied text.

Readers react to a piece by Polly Toynbee in which she argues that Andy Burnham is the person to lead Britain out of its cohesion crisis In her article, Polly Toynbee mentions the rise of racism globally, citing Donald Trump and the usual suspects ( There is a racism and cohesion crisis in Britain, and someone needs to lead us out of it. The report also notes that His name is Andy Burnham, 22 September ). She fails to mention that the Labour party has also indulged in overt and dog-whistle racist rhetoric. Keir Starmer spoke about Britain becoming “ an island of strangers ”. He later retracted it, but the message was out there. Wes Streeting, when health secretary, agreed with Katie Lam on the problem of foreign doctors (rather than the real problem of disastrous NHS restructures, poor management and underfunding). More recently, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, stated that a video clip where Zack Polanski states a few sentences in Urdu makes him “ uncomfortable ”.

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