London Mayor Sadiq Khan was at the centre of a race row recently after his official website published a photo of a white family with the caption, “Doesn’t represent real Londoners.” The slur, reported by The Mail on Sunday, featured in a guide that promised to appeal to “everyone no matter, their age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, disability or family make up [sic].”
The official guide on how to portray the “brand” of the mayor and the Greater London Authority was released as Mr. Khan celebrated Black Pride, an event that he said demonstrated that “in London, we embrace our diversity.” His office has since disowned the caption, insisting that it was “added by a staff member in error, and doesn’t reflect the view of the mayor or the Greater London Authority.”
Officials were quick to remove the document from the mayor’s website, but by then the row was already well underway.
“Straightforward racism” was the verdict of writer and trade unionist Paul Embery. New Culture Forum Director Peter Whittle added that “if this had been said about a black family, there would already have been a number of resignations, careers would’ve been finished and the media would still be discussing it at Christmas.”
For Bow Group Chairman Ben Harris-Quinney, the guide was reminiscent of a race row triggered by one of Britain’s most famous comedians. He told The European Conservative:
It was only a few years ago that Sadiq Khan was leading the condemnation of John Cleese for saying London is no longer an English city, yet we find him this week saying something far more extreme.
Unfathomably, it is deemed more acceptable for Khan to make such comments; one can only imagine the furore if [Tory MP] Jacob Rees-Mogg had said rural Somerset wasn’t for black people. I have no doubt he would be defenestrated of all public and private positions within hours. Khan’s hypocrisy only serves to underline the irredeemable hypocrisy of modern Britain.
Mr. Harris-Quinney added that the “tragedy” is what both Mr. Khan and Mr. Cleese were “alluding to” is “absolutely right.”
I seem to recall a young Tony Blair announcing that London was a great city but no longer a British one. What has changed in the interceding period is not London no longer being an English city; that was the case decades ago. It’s that most of our cities are no longer discernibly English.
The dual sledgehammers of mass immigration and corporatism in just a few decades have turned England into little more than a vast carpark for globalisation. It would perhaps be easier to see the problem as one of race, as Khan does, but [it] is a question of culture, and we have now seen enough of multiculturalism to know it is not the culture of everything—but of nothing.
An official representing the mayor said the guide was now being “reviewed to ensure the language and guidance is [sic] appropriate.”
