A lawmaker from the opposition Labour party in UK has sparked online outrage after claiming Rishi Sunak becoming prime minister is ‘not a win for Asian representation’ as he is immensely rich, according to reports.
Nottingham MP Nadia Whittome said that Sunak was ‘not on your side’ as Britain’s first prime minister of Asian heritage. She also accused Sunak of overseeing a fall in UK living standards.
She also attacked Sunak and his wife for their family wealth, which she said was ‘twice the estimated wealth of King Charles III’.
British Indian Whittome on Monday (24) deleted her tweet with these comments upon instruction from the Labour party, it is learnt.
“He’s a multi-millionaire who, as chancellor, cut taxes on bank profits while overseeing the biggest drop in living standards since 1956. Black, white or Asian: if you work for a living, he is not on your side,” the Labour MP is reported to have said.
Meanwhile, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner welcomed Sunak’s appointment as prime minister.
Zarah Sultana, another Left-wing Labour MP, called Sunak a ‘complete, utter fraud’ because he supported the Government’s policy to process asylum seekers in Rwanda.
“This again shows the limitations of representation politics. Having black and brown people at the top does not mean that the lives of black and brown people in the UK and across the world will be better,” Sultana was quoted as saying in media reports.
“In fact, they’ve gotten worse. The Tories are the party of the one per cent and they will always do the bidding of the one per cent.”
Sunak, a GP’s son from Southampton whose Indian parents immigrated to Britain in the 1960s, takes his parliamentary oath on Hindu’s sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita.
A few weeks ago, another Labour MP Rupa Huq had the Labour whip suspended after she told an audience at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool last month that Kwasi Kwarteng was ‘superficially’ black.