Bob Blackman has previously retweeted Tommy Robinson
The newly elected chair of the powerful 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, Bob Blackman, has a history of Islamophobia, which has included sharing posts by the far-right Tommy Robinson.
The backbench committee of MPs voted to elect Blackman – the MP for Harrow East – with 61 votes, while the other candidate Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown received 37 votes.
In a sign of how the Tory party is once more moving even further to the right, Blackman, who will now chair the committee that plays an influential role in choosing the next Tory party leader, has also previously hosted Tapan Ghosh in Parliament, a man who called on
the UN to ‘control the Muslim birth rate world over’ and who had also praised the Rohingya genocide of Muslims in Burma.
In March 2020, Blackman was included by the Muslim Council of Britain in a dossier of evidence sent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.
Blackman also previously expressed “regret” after sharing a Facebook post from an American anti-Muslim website.
The MP shared a story with the headline “Muslim Somali sex gang say raping white British children ‘part of their culture’” from the website Hardcore News USA, which often features Islamophobic stories and conspiracy theories.
That Blackman has now been elected to chair such a powerful Tory committee is yet more proof of just how little the Tories care about Islamophobia.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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