Wes Streeting has accused the Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin of making \u201cracist\u201d remarks after she said seeing adverts full of black and Asian people \u201cdrives her mad\u201d.<\/p>\n
The health secretary said Pochin was \u201conly sorry she\u2019s been caught and called out\u201d, adding she had \u201csaid the quiet bit loud\u201d as he warned of a return to \u201c1970s, 1980s-style racism\u201d.<\/p>\n
Streeting\u2019s comments went further than Labour\u2019s official remarks from the party chair, Anna Turley, who on Saturday night condemned Pochin\u2019s remarks and said Reform were \u201cmore interested in dividing our country than uniting it\u201d, but stopped short of calling the comments racist.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Pochin, who is Reform UK\u2019s MP for Runcorn and Helsby, complained that \u201cevery advert\u201d seemed to feature \u201cblack and Asian people\u201d, as she responded to a viewer on TalkTV who had complained about the demographics of advertising.<\/p>\n
Pochin said the viewer was \u201cabsolutely right\u201d, adding \u201cit doesn\u2019t reflect our society and I feel that your average white person, average white family is \u2026 not represented any more\u201d, blaming the \u201cwoke liberati\u201d in the \u201carty-farty world\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be fine inside the M25,\u201d she added, \u201cbut it\u2019s definitely not representative of the rest of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
She later apologised, saying her comments were \u201cphrased poorly\u201d and she had not intended to cause offence. \u201cThe point I was trying to make is that the British advertising agency world has gone DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] mad and many adverts are now unrepresentative of British society as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will endeavour to ensure my language is more accurate going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Streeting hardened Labour\u2019s attack on Reform, as he told the BBC\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show he had spent time in a London secondary school on Friday, listening to boys describe racist abuse in \u201cone of the most diverse cities on Earth\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they are describing, and what we have seen on our streets in recent weeks and months is a return of [the] 1970s, 1980s-style racism I thought we had left in the history books.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way we are going to defeat this racism is to call it out and confront it for what it is, and for the decent majority of this country, to stand against it, as we have always done. I think what [Pochin] said was a disgrace. I think it was racist.\u201d<\/p>\n
He accused Reform of believing \u201cour flag only belongs to some of us, who look like me, not all of us who have built this country and its success\u201d, and that Britain remained the \u201cmost successful multifaith democracy in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n