With more than a fortnight to go until the general election, tensions between members of the UK’s major political parties already seem to be at boiling point.
So far it’s been a campaign characterised by the metaphorical pointing of fingers, but seconds after appearing in an interview on Friday evening two senior politicians – foreign secretary Dominic Raab and shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald – brought the tension between Conservatives and Labour very much to the fore.
The pair clashed live on Sky News during coverage of the leader’s Question Time debate, confronting each other during terse exchange about racism in each of the leading political parties.
In the clip, which was shared online by Sky News, the pair can be seen pointing fingers at one another as McDonald calls Raab out on the Conservative’s failure to hold an inquiry specifically into Islamophobia, to which Raab responds by questioning Labour’s response to anti-Semitism.
Speaking over each other for close to a minute as others in the room look on, McDonald says: “You’re actually putting it into the long grass, you’re refusing to do it … listen to Baroness Warsi, she’s telling you what to do about it. You should be doing it.”
Raab replies: “Two parties in this country’s history have been investigated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – Labour under Corbyn and the BNP (British National Party).
“Answer that.”
The foreign secretary, who appears visibly frustrated, then walks away from the discussion and is quickly surrounded by members of staff.
Later, on the BBC’s Newsnight, McDonald said Labour is “happy” to be subject to an inquiry into anti-Semitism because its efforts to tackle the issue could be “externally validated”.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission launched an investigation into anti-Semitism in the party in August “after receiving a number of complaints about allegations”.
McDonald added: “We’re happy that EHRC are looking into these matters because if they can look at our processes and find any room for improvement then we want to hear from them.
“We think we’ve taken many steps including the doubling of staff, the appointing of internal counsel, and speeding up the processing of complaints.
“So we’ve done an awful lot about this but we are very happy to have that externally validated and looked into by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and really that’s why we set it up in the first instance so they could carry out these functions.”
Asked if Labour could have envisaged being investigated by the commission it set up in 2007, he said it “should have no barriers to where it looks” and suggested it should look into Islamophobia complaints in the Tory party.
He added: “Hopefully the Conservative Party will take the warnings from Baroness Warsi and set up their inquiry into Islamophobia and if necessary the EHRC may want to look there as well.
“It’s critically important that we remove all forms of prejudice out of political life and wider society.”
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has been vocal in calling for an inquiry into apparent anti-Muslim bigotry within the Conservative Party.
She recently tweeted the decision not to hold an inquiry into the specific issue was “disappointing” and “predictable”, with the Muslim Council of Britain accusing the Conservative leadership of “denial, deflection and discounting” after the party broke its promise to hold a specific inquiry into Islamophobia within its ranks.