Monday, June 23, 2008

Boris aide forced to quit amidst race remarks row

The Times reports:

One of Boris Johnson’s most senior advisers was forced to resign last night after he plunged the Mayor of London into another racial controversy, saying that immigrant blacks could leave if they did not like the Tory administration.

The remarks were reported by Marc Wadsworth on The Latest.com:

McGrath was far from politically correct, David-Cameron-new- cuddly-Conservative Party, when I pointed out to him a critical comment of Voice columnist Darcus Howe that the election of “Boris Johnson, a right-wing Conservative, might just trigger off a mass exodus of older Caribbean migrants back to our homelands”.

He retorted: “Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.” McGrath dismissed influential race commentator Howe as ‘shrill’.

The "sacking" of McGrath has stirred up a hornet's nest in Toryland, with Iain Dale issuing a very strong condemnation of Boris:

Boris has hung James McGrath out to dry - apparently either with the connivance of or at the behest of the Party leadership - in the most despicable and and cowardly manner possible.

We have the formulaic defence that McGrath, of course, is not a racist and that his remarks were taken out of context. Of course. That is what we are always told in these sorts of circumstances.

Quite frankly, we see these sorts of incidents and comments from the real Tory party every week. They will continue because there is an inherent contradiction between Cameron's attempt to portray the Tories as the new nicey-nicey party and the views of some members of the Conservative party. Cameron is basically trying to wrestle with a tectonic plate which he is trying to get moving in the opposite direction of the way it is going. It is not going to happen in a hurry.

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