Labour’s obsession with race shows no signs of fading

After a relatively successful spell attempting to side itself with ordinary folk, Labour has lurched back into hardline identity politics with a particular focus on the issue of race.

Over recent days some of the party’s leading figures have stoked up the idea of Tory Britain being a hotbed of discrimination. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy is leading the way with a call for a posthumous royal pardon of those who took part in an anti-slavery uprising in Guyana in 1823. According to Lammy, the pardon would help Britain find a ‘path to repair’ in regard to its ‘acknowledgment of its role in the history of slavery’.

Yet given that Guyana has been independent since 1966 and a republic with its own president since 1970, a royal pardon being issued would in itself be a kind of bizarre act of colonialism.

Lammy’s raising of the matter serves as a reminder that Labour has still not disavowed its 2019 manifesto policy requiring ‘an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule’.