A Labour MP has offered Kwasi Kwarteng “sincere and heartfelt apologies” after being suspended from the party for describing him as “superficially” black during a fringe meeting at conference. Rupa Huq had the party whip suspended for making what was accused of being “racist” comments about the chancellor. The former shadow Home Office minister was recorded at an event held on Monday on the sidelines of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool hosted by British Future and the Black Equity Organisation and also attended by the party’s chair, Anneliese Dodds. In a statement released on Tuesday, Huq said: “I have today contacted Kwasi Kwarteng to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies for the comments I made at yesterday’s Labour conference fringe meeting. “My comments were ill-judged and I wholeheartedly apologise to anyone affected.” Huq could be heard on a short recording obtained by the Guido Fawkes website saying: “I’m sorry if I was not making myself understood clearly. He superficially is a black man.” She said Kwarteng went to “the top schools in the country” and added: “If you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn’t know he’s black.” Huq faced swift condemnation, with David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, telling BBC’s Politics Live programme: “I think those comment are unfortunate. I wouldn’t have made them myself and clearly I hope Rupa apologises and retracts that.”
Jake Berry, the chair of the Conservative party, wrote to the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, saying he had “serious concerns” about the remarks. He called for Huq to lose the Labour whip, and added: “I trust you will join me in unequivocally condemning these comments as nothing less than racist.” Huq had the whip suspended on Tuesday afternoon, not long after Starmer finished his headline conference speech to thousands of members. A party spokesperson said afterwards: “We obviously condemn the remarks she made, they are totally inappropriate and we would call on her to apologise and withdraw them.” In her letter to Kwarteng, Huq said she “spoke in haste and adopted clumsy language which in no way reflects my views or those of the Labour party” – and said during the fringe event she cited the fact that the Conservatives had had four black and Asian chancellors “as a positive”. “On being challenged, I sought to expand with a poor choice of words, which I retract,” she added. “I fell entirely short of my convictions on this occasion, therefore I will be seeking out and completing anti-racism and bias training.”