Newly-appointed Tory Chairman Jake Berry has written to Sir Keir calling on him to remove the party whip from Rupa Huq, following Guido’s revelations this lunchtime that she accused Kwasi Kwarteng of being “superficially” black. Berry’s letter calls on Starmer to join him in “unequivocally condemning these comments as nothing less than racist…”

“and that the Labour whip will be withdrawn from Rupa Huq as a consequence.”

The Guardian’s already approached Rupa, who boldly says “I stand by” the comments and doesn’t believe they require an apology. Guido approached Kwasi’s team, though it sounded like they had rather more pressing issues to be dealing with. 

Read Berry’s letter in full below:

Rupa Huq used a Labour fringe event to launch an astonishing racial tirade against Britain’s first black Chancellor of the Exchequer, accusing Kwasi Kwarteng of being “superficially” black:

“Superficially he is a black man… if you hear him on the Today Programme, you wouldn’t know he is black.”

The comments were so shocking that the fringe event chair, Sunder Katwala, was forced to intervene, warning Huq that Kwarteng’s conservative ideology “doesn’t make him not black… and I think the Labour Party has to be really careful.” Ironically, the comment came yesterday morning at the fringe event “What’s Next for Labour’s Agenda on Race?”…

On July 7, Labour MP Rupa Huq confidently told the Commons, “The Independent reports that the PM and Tory Ministers resigning are entitled to £420,000 of severance pay… Can he confirm now from that dispatch box that they will be forfeiting their right to this? Because we do not reward failure.” Unfortunately for Huq, FullFact has just investigated this figure and concluded it was widely off the mark, by up to 100%. In other words, Huq misled the House…

PM and his ex ministers who squandered a majority of 80 and turned it into the biggest governmental car crash this country has ever seen are now due £420,000 in severance pay from the pubic purse

With #costoflivingcrisis they should decline £££ to show we do not reward failure: pic.twitter.com/CBQ68Rijyv

— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) July 7, 2022

Huq’s false figure, ironically, had come from the LibDems, who then fed it to The Independent, and was then quoted by Rupa in the Commons. How did the LibDems – who have now accepted to FullFact that the estimate was not correct – get it so wrong?

Primarily, they included PPSs, who are unpaid, and therefore entitled to a grand total of zero severance pay. Some ministers were also calculated under the wrong pay band, with Neil O’Brien and Jo Churchill being listed as Ministers of State rather than Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State – the former being entitled to a thousand or so more sterling upon leaving office. The LibDems’ new figure, which Full Fact broadly agrees with, is half that Rupa Huq proclaimed to the Commons: £245,487…

This all poses some awkwardness for Huq, who has spent years accusing Boris of lying to the Commons. In October 2020 she tweeted the PM had “blatantly barefaced lied to the House of Commons” over TfL. In April 2022 she tweeted Boris had “lied and lied to Parliament”. In January she said “He’s lied to Parliament”. Unfortunately for Rupa, Labour’s stitch-up Privileges Committee has now confirmed that intent is broadly irrelevant to the issue of whether one misleads the House. Guido hopes for a correction of the record as soon as possible…

Ever-innovative Amazon launched their first checkout-free store in the UK at the weekend in Ealing, bringing over the high-tech concept from their American trials. The store’s new constituency MP Rupa Huq welcomed in the new shop with a visit yesterday, Tweeting “Unusual to see Amazon branded curry and milk. Bakery particularly popular. Staff instore and out to manage queue plus click & collect but no till and QR code to enter means it’s ..different”. Oddly her mask seemed to disappear between taking her Twitter promo pics and leaving the store…

Guido imagines Huq didn’t make her previous views on Amazon known while on the visit, having previously called them “tax dodgers“, said the government should “go after them“, and accused them of hurting local independent retailers such as bookshops. There was a reason Amazon didn’t ask her to cut the red ribbon…

Rupa Huq’s constituents in Ealing Central and Acton have been receiving a somewhat ill-advised Christmas card from their MP this year; fronted by a dark, glossy picture of scaffolding-clad Parliament haunted by floating multicoloured luminescent festive Coronaviruses. Rupa has not responded to Guido’s request for comment. Her Ealing constituency has been hit by hundreds of coronavirus deaths.

Rupa isn’t the only MP to reference the year’s political crises with her Christmas cards. Peter Bone has treated MPs to this photoshop masterpiece:

What’s the banker offering on fishing transition quotas, Peter?