{"id":396447,"date":"2019-02-19T22:58:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T21:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ex-labour-mp-who-quit-party-over-racism-now-embroiled-in-racism-row-slammed-on-social-media-rt-uk-news\/"},"modified":"2019-02-19T22:58:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T21:58:52","slug":"ex-labour-mp-who-quit-party-over-racism-now-embroiled-in-racism-row-slammed-on-social-media-rt-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ex-labour-mp-who-quit-party-over-racism-now-embroiled-in-racism-row-slammed-on-social-media-rt-uk-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Labour MP who quit party over \u2018racism\u2019 now embroiled in racism row, slammed on social media \u2014 RT UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2019.02\/thumbnail\/5c6bed99fc7e93ee7b8b459d.JPG\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        A UK MP who quit the Labour Party over alleged racism, has been caught on live TV appearing to refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as having a \u201cfunny tinge,&#8221; prompting widespread ridicule.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stockbridge has become involved in a racism row on her very first day as a member of the newly-formed \u2018The Independent Group.\u2019 Smith was appearing as a guest on the BBC\u2019s Politics Live show, to discuss her resignation and, ironically, the scale of racism in the UK.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><strong>The recent history of the party I\u2019ve just left suggests that it\u2019s not just about being black or a funny tinge, you know, different, from the BAME community.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Fellow guest Ash Sarkar, Novara Media\u2019s political commentator, looking slightly perplexed, interjected:\u00a0<em>\u201cA funny what?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0The BBC\u2019s presenter, Jo Coburn did not pick up on Smith\u2019s comment.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"media__youtube-frame lazyload\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300px\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hHWP1fBjstI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The remarks initiated much condemnation on social media as well as parody memes and videos mocking Smith\u2019s choice of language, with many accusing the former Labour MP of casual racism.<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Of course she&#8217;s not racist. Some of her best friends are a funny tinge.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chakrabortty\/status\/1097498567151939584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Not the greatest of starts for Smith as an independent MP, who issued an apologetic video via her Twitter account, just hours later, in which she claimed she had misspoken badly and was sorry for any offence that she may have caused.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Smith was one of seven Blairite Labour MPs to quit the party and formed The Independent Group.<\/p>\n<p>In her resignation speech she highlighted anti-Semitism as one of the main reasons for leaving Labour, an issue, she claimed, was not being taken seriously enough by leader Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n<p>The new grouping of Independent politicians headed by prominent \u2018People\u2019s Vote\u2019 advocate, Chuka Umunna, have appealed to all MPs, not just Labour, to join their group, as the current parties are \u2018part of the problem, not the solution.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/subscribe\/\" id=\"subscribe-focus\">Subscribe<\/a> to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won\u2019t tell you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/451816-independent-mp-racism-row\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A UK MP who quit the Labour Party over alleged racism, has been caught on live TV appearing to refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as having a \u201cfunny tinge,&#8221; prompting widespread ridicule. Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stockbridge has become involved in a racism row on her very first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":396448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-396447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}