Labour Party surrenders to identity politics
Posted by admin978 on March 14, 2017 · Leave a Comment
Will former mayor Afzal Khan – seen here at a St George’s Day event in 2006 – be able to rely on backing from ethnic rivals in his bid to be Gorton MP?
Nominations closed a few hours ago for Labour’s candidature in the forthcoming Manchester Gorton by-election. We reported a few days ago that politics in this area is dominated by infighting between ethnic power brokers – among whom the strongest is former Manchester mayor Afzal Khan, boss of a powerful Pakistani machine who is already an MEP.
Khan remains favourite – and we now learn that the entire selection process will be dominated by Labour’s politically correct obsession with ethnic and gender identity.
A panel from the party’s national executive will choose a shortlist of four, which will be put before the local membership (who until that final stage will have no say).
This shortlist of four will have to include one ethnic minority woman, one ethnic minority man, one white woman and one white man!
While this seems absurdly pious, the cynical effect is that infighting between rival Asians will become pointless: the rumoured “intimidation” and mass signing up of ethnic blocks as Labour members will not matter, since only one Asian male can make the shortlist, and its up to Labour’s national party HQ who that will be…
Corbynista hopeful Sam Wheeler (an Oxford graduate and old boy of the prestigious Manchester Grammar School) is favourite to be the token white male on the shortlist. Afzal Khan’s rivals might also include white female Julie Reid, and Asian female Yasmine Dar. The big question is whether Bangladeshi power broker Luthfur Rahman, chairman of the Gorton Labour Party, will swing his block vote behind Khan, or whether we will again see Bangladeshis preferring to back a non-Muslim rather than a hated Pakistani.
Meanwhile George Galloway remains on the trail of disaffected ex-Labour Muslims, speaking to a local audience after Friday prayers, and playing up his role as a pro-Palestinian activist alongside the late Sir Gerald Kaufman, whose death caused this by-election.
