Labour frontbencher Jess Phillips has been accused of “racist and bullying behaviour” after a row on social media with high-profile headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh.
Ms Birbalsingh, once dubbed “Britain’s strictest headteacher”, accused the Birmingham Yardley MP of seeking to “whip up a social media mob” against her on Twitter.
It came after Ms Birbalsingh, head of high-achieving Michaela Community School in Brent, said she inadvertently tweeted a picture of Tina Turner alongside her abusive former husband Ike Turner amid tributes to the late star.
Ms Phillips then tweeted “hold the line!”, adding: “Stay with me! Domestic abuse is never OK and we will defeat those who prop up the status quo…”
In a letter to Labour leader Keir Starmer, Ms Birbalsingh, who describes herself as a small conservative wrote: “She inspired a vicious mob attack against me on Twitter on the evening of May 24 2023, and called into question my school’s safeguarding policies in a deliberative attempt to challenge my competence as a Headteacher.”
“My view is that Ms Phillips’ extreme and unprompted hostility towards me is motivated by my race. By this I do not mean that she hates all people of colour.
What she said next was very interesting. She said: “Her [Phillips’] behaviour is a clear example of ‘unconscious bias’. I mean that she hates me, despite not knowing me, because she subscribes to the idea that Black and Asian individuals in public life owe a duty to voice opinions that match with a left-wing view of the world, or they are worthy of her contempt.”
Ms Birbalsingh is correct. In fact, she doesn’t go far enough. Western liberals like Phillips are supremacists; not white supremacists but liberal supremacists. They think the way they view the world is the only way it should be viewed and to hell with anyone who disagrees, be they a dictator in the middle east who needs democracy “bombed into them,” as George W Bush put it, brexiteers and especially a person like Katharine Birbalsingh, a prominent and successful woman of colour.
Phillips will be seething at Birbalsingh. How dare an ethnic minority stray off the liberal reservation and dare to have a thought of her own. Didn’t she know she’s supposed to be a leftist, and a rabid one at that, all the while forgetting she herself is supposed to celebrate a successful professional woman? Whatever happened to feminism Jess?
Phillips and her like are vile. They see ethnic minorities almost as pets, to be protected, petted, told they’re a good girl but get a swift smack on the nose when they won’t roll over.
The Homeland Party would see to it that people with huge social media followings can’t send in a virtual hate mob to attack someone, especially not efficient and effective teachers who can think for themselves.
