1 day ago
9
GB News is facing calls to cut ties with a regular contributor who has been accused of racism after claiming that the House of Commons deputy speaker, Nusrat Ghani, should not be allowed in the house because she was born in Pakistan.
The comments by Lucy White, a rightwing activist, have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum amid warnings that explicitly racist language is becoming increasingly normalised in British life.
White, described as a public policy expert during appearances on GB News and Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV, said on her X account on Wednesday: “Today, the Deputy Speaker presiding over the Budget Statement in the UK House of Commons is Nus Ghani.
“Nus Ghani was born in Kashmir, Pakistan. There should not be a single person born in Pakistan in the UK House of Commons.”
White, who has more than 18,000 followers on X, is one of a new generation of activists seeking to inject far-right language into public debate. By Thursday afternoon, the comment had been retweeted more than 1,300 times and liked more than 9,000 times on X, which has increasingly become a platform for misinformation and xenophobic content since its previous incarnation, Twitter, was bought by Elon Musk.
She is listed as a “global public policy advisor” on the website of Gunster Strategies, a US lobbying firm that claims to work with clients such as Coca-Cola and AstraZeneca.
Formerly a staff member for a Conservative MP, White is also an activist with the Women’s Safety Initiative, a group that weaponises women’s safety to advance anti-migrant rhetoric. It sought to exploit the tensions in the UK last summer around asylum seeker accommodation.
White has cast doubt previously on Shabana Mahmood’s suitability to be home secretary because she is of Pakistani heritage. White made the remarks in an appearance with Jeremy Vine on TalkTV,.
Earlier this month, she also said: “People like Mahmood, a Pakistani Muslim who has the audacity to larp [live-action role play] around as English, is the cause of division in our country. The only way to ‘unite a divided country’ is by sending the third worlders home. They will be more comfortable with their own people and so will we.”
TalkTV described White as an occasional contributor, adding: “The views she expresses are her own, and her recent social media post referring to Nus Ghani was reprehensible. We have no plans to invite Lucy White back on Talk in the foreseeable future.”
However, GB News stopped short of saying it would not air her views in the future. A spokesperson said: “Comments expressed on personal social media accounts by individuals who have appeared on our platforms do not reflect the views or values of the channel.”
Tell Mama, a national project which records and measures anti-Muslim incidents, is to write to GB News to seek an explanation. “Anyone espousing such views essentially marginalises and takes out of our political life anyone who has an international heritage. This is distinctly discriminatory and verges on racially segregated discourse which is simply a red line,” said a spokesperson.
Liam Walker, an Oxfordshire Conservative councillor, responded on X by saying: “Lucy is a racist. No broadcaster should put this racist on TV to spread her despicable hatred.”
after newsletter promotion
“I have noticed it both locally and nationally over the past year how racism is creeping into everyday conversations and it is almost becoming acceptable to say things like that,” he told the Guardian.
“It has definitely got worse. In the county council elections in May I noticed when knocking on doors how open people were to saying things they would not have come out with before. It’s down to social media but also it’s Reform UK, who clearly have a problem in their party.”
The Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde said: “When you have people like Nigel Farage, with the allegations about racism and antisemitism coming to light in his past and his failing to answer questions about them, and the likes of his colleague Sarah Pochin talking about how seeing black and Asian people in TV adverts drives her mad, it clearly emboldens people.
“It emboldens parts of our society to scale up that racism in their own ways. Unless it is called out by people across the political spectrum it is going to get worse.”
The controversy comes amid concern about the increasing prevalence of racist language in political and public life. Reform UK was accused this month of embracing racism after it picked Matthew Goodwin, a former academic who argued that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds were not necessarily British, as the head of its new student organisation.
Ghani became the first Muslim female minister to speak from the Commons dispatch box and the first Muslim woman elected as a Tory MP in 2015. Born in Kashmir to Pakistani parents, she grew up in Birmingham before studying at Birmingham City University and Leeds.
Ghani retweeted a comment by Nazir Afzal, the former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, who commented on White’s post by saying: “People whining about ‘British values’ while abandoning the biggest one: democracy. Nus Ghani earned her seat through votes, hard work, and public service. If that threatens you, it’s not her citizenship you’re worried about. She is British, elected by Brits, doing a British job.”
White, who has a picture of herself being interviewed on GB News by Goodwin, has said in the past that her views had resulted in her being labelled a racist while studying at Cambridge and among schoolfriends.
