Labour has a problem with racism among its supporters, says James Cleverly

Protesters outside Labour's London headquarters in a demonstration organised by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism in 2018 - TOLGA AKMEN/AFP

Labour has a problem with racism among its supporters, the Home Secretary has said.

In an interview with The Telegraph, James Cleverly said that his most recent experience of racism had been from the “political Left”, with their anti-patriotic rhetoric telling ethnic minorities they should know their place.

“I get criticism when I say how proud I am of this country, I get criticised by Left-wing voices, and it reminds me that they fundamentally hate this country, and they expect me to echo their opinion, and I don’t, and I won’t,” said Mr Cleverly, whose father is English and mother is from Sierra Leone.

The Home Secretary’s comments follow an election row over racist comments by some Reform UK candidates and supporters, including personal slurs targeting Rishi Sunak’s Asian heritage which left the Prime Minister “hurt” and “angry”.

Mr Cleverly said he did not think the Reform UK leadership had “gone anywhere near far enough distancing themselves from some of these distasteful opinions”.

Speaking during a break from campaigning in his Braintree seat in Essex, he said: “I’ve met Nigel Farage, and whilst I fundamentally disagree with him, I’m not suggesting that’s the kind of language that he personally would use.

“But the simple truth is, a number of people who have, you know, joined his party and are campaigning or standing on behalf of his party have clearly got some really quite anti-British views.

“These are not patriotic views. Suggesting that we placate Putin is not patriotic. Suggesting that Churchill should have struck a deal with Hitler, that’s not patriotic. That’s not what my voters in Essex want to associate themselves with.”

James Cleverly believes there is still time to woo Reform voters back to the Tories - THOMAS KRYCH/STORY PICTURE AGENCY

Asked if he had experienced racism on the campaign or elsewhere, he said: “The sad truth is the racism I’ve received most recently has come from the political Left. That’s a sad indication of modern Left-wing politics, the idea that they’re very proud of black politicians, but only if they agree with their Left-wing ideology.”

He said he was “incredibly proud” to live in a “fantastic country” where people like his and Mr Sunak’s parents could work hard and get “huge opportunities”.

“The ethnic diversity at the top of conservative politics is a really powerful reflection of that entrepreneurial attitude that many migrant families have, and the fact that in the UK, if you work hard, you play by the rules, you pay your taxes and you do the right thing, you can really get on,” said Mr Cleverly.

“Whereas the voice I’m hearing from the Left is kind of like: ‘Know your place, stick with the Left-wing lines to take. Don’t be proud. Don’t be proud of this country’.”

Despite the Tories lagging up to 20 points behind Labour in the polls, Mr Cleverly said he “struggled to remember” a time when there were so many undecided voters at this stage of an election campaign, with just three days to go.

Although he refused to say if the Tories could still win, he said Labour had “clearly not sealed the deal” with voters which gave the Tories a “credible chance” getting “a lot” of the undecided members of the public to “recognise what’s at risk and vote Conservative”.

‘Very uncomfortable with Labour’

“I think a lot of those voters have realised that the election is still very much in their hands, that the opinion polls don’t dictate the outcome. Voters do. And as I say, a lot of those voters have told me that they are very, very uncomfortable with Labour,” he said.

It is this assessment of the political odds that he uses to close down speculation that he might stand in a post-election Conservative leadership contest. Asked if he would be prepared to lead the Tories if asked to do so in the event of Mr Sunak losing the election, he replied: “My plan is to try and make that a moot point.

“My plan is to try to infuse those as yet undecided voters, those people who may have told the pollsters they were thinking about voting Labour, who are starting to recognise the fact that they will be taxed to the eyeballs by a Labour government.

“So we get the best chance of having as many Conservative Members of Parliament as possible working towards getting a working majority. That’s what I’m relentlessly focused on and any distractions other than that is not the best use of my time, effort or energy. I am focusing on getting myself and my colleagues elected.”

To this end, he highlighted three key pillars of Conservatism: investing in defence, backing the police and protecting the UK’s borders. “All those things would be put at risk with a Labour Government,” he said.

“Particularly in light of the fact that Keir Starmer has already said he’s going to gerrymander the system with votes at 16, packing out the House of Lords, probably going to give votes to foreign nationals and to criminals, which is something that he’s been passionate about for years and years and years.

“That’s totally at odds with what the British people need and want.”

‘Big majority’

Mr Cleverly, a former party chairman as well as former foreign secretary, believed there was still time to woo Reform voters back to the Tories on the basis that they “instinctively” knew that backing Nigel Farage’s party would hand Labour a potential landslide victory.

He steered clear of talk about a “super majority,” but warned: “The point is that the most likely outcome if a lot of people vote for Reform is that Labour end up with a big majority and will do the opposite of what those voters want.

“In the conversation, they don’t need me to tell them that they know instinctively a Labour government would be completely at odds with what they want, and that even the best result for Reform would be maybe a handful of MPs, if that, but a big Labour majority with a leader who took the knee rather than backing the police.”

His Telegraph interview comes just hours after the seismic results in France’s parliamentary elections, putting Marine Le Pen’s Right-wing National Rally party on course for power. This has raised speculation that the French could take a less aggressive approach to stopping the migrant boats crossing the Channel.

However, Mr Cleverly did not believe it would affect Anglo-French efforts to stop the small boats in the short term as inter-government co-operation was done through ministers appointed under the presidential system of Emmanuel Macron.

‘Co-operation across Europe’

“So the bottom line is that we’ve already got very, very good co-operation across Europe. I have no doubt that under the Conservatives who take this issue seriously, we will continue doing that,” he said.

“I genuinely fear that those people queuing up in France, praying for a Labour government before they come over to the UK, the criminal gangs who know that Labour will be a softer touch on this than we are, they are just waiting for a Labour government.

“And I really worry that the problem is not so much the electoral outcome in Europe, but the electoral outcome here in the UK.”

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