Labour MP Simon Danczuk, the MP who recently clashed with Owen Jones on the Daily Politics over the Spending Review, has a piece in today's Telegraph in which he writes that the politics of the Labour left "should be viewed in the same way as we view the views of the BNP".
Labour MP Simon Danczuk, the MP who recently clashed with Owen Jones on the Daily Politics over the Spending Review, has a piece in today’s Telegraph in which he writes that the politics of the Labour left “should be viewed in the same way as we view the views of the BNP”.
This is a shame, and it appears frustration has got the better of Danczuk, because putting aside this absurd comparison he makes some good points in the piece.
But no, the Labour left should not “be viewed in the same way as the BNP”. The BNP are a racist party who, amongst other things, would like to forcibly repatriate non-white Britons. If Danczuk had been comparing communists to the BNP then there might have been an academic argument to be had (Stalinists killed more people than fascists, after all), but he only refers to the “Labour left”.
In other words, Danczuk is comparing people who use their time and energy to try to improve the lives of working people – usually for nothing in return – to racist thugs and holocaust deniers who firebomb “P*ki shops”.
As well as being extraordinarily lazy, this is a disgraceful slur on many fine activists.
Sure, some of the Labour left’s ideas about nationalisation may be a little naive; but this does not make them comparable to a party that promotes sinister racial theories and hates people based on nothing more than the pigmentation of their skin.
Danczuk is right to highlight the economic illiteracy of those unreconstructed Bennites who have failed to learn from the failures of the post-war settlement. He is also right to criticise those in the Labour Party who view “Blairites” as the main enemy, rather than the Conservative Party. But comparing the Labour left to the BNP is not the way to make that point.
Being wrong is not the same as being racist, and it’s remarkable that anyone (least of all an MP) should need to be told that.
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27 Responses to “Message to Simon Danczuk MP: Being wrong is not the same as being racist”
Cole
My point is that this is something lots of people say, especially businessmen. It’s not a leftie thing.
Ian Young
So Red Len and Owen Jones are putting fear into the hearts of the kulaks
and will have us all making tractors for the five year plan. Why is this Labour MP indulging in 30 year old media caricatures of people that could at best be described as left wing social democrats.
A period of silence from Mr Danczuk would be welcomed.
Ian Young
You are way off the mark. What the left wants is an end to this unilateral Bolkenstein culture which has encouraged employers to turn the UK Labour market into a Dutch auction on wages and conditions. But according to Mr Danczuk this a hard left agenda.
OldLb
I never said it was.
I said it was racist. It is racist.
OldLb
The left created it. It allowed in 5 million migrants most of whom are working in low skilled jobs. End result is that supply/demand kick in. Unlimited supply, versus stagnant demand, and prices go down. That’s the cause of the poor on low wages.
You also have to add in taxes on jobs, and taxes on the low waged.
Hence why I keep pushing the low skilled migrant issue, because that’s the biggest problem for the poor. It also means they make a rational decision not to work.
At the top end, its different. Migration doesn’t drive the middle class out of jobs, in my opinion it it brings in work. If you want a Guatemalan lawyer in London, you can probably get one. So it means the work that needs a Guatamalan lawyer and a lawyer with Singaporean knowledge comes to London.
So I would introduce a threshold. You have to pay more tax if you want to migrate to the UK, than the average government spend. ie. Earn more than 40K to pay 12K in tax. That means you aren’t on welfare. You aren’t in social housing. You aren’t competing against those on welfare. The jobs that are available go to the low skilled. And, finally, its a non-racist test. It’s purely financial, not about creed or country or colour of skin.