Ominous: Mandy Richards, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Worcester, approaches a door with a file of documents. House number erased to protect the resident.
The UK Labour Party has selected a female ethnic minority candidate, Mandy Richards, to stand for Parliament in Worcester. According to the Mail (archive), the Sun (archive) and the Times (archive), Ms Richards is presently the subject of no less than 14 separate Civil Restraining Orders (CRO). A CRO is used by a judge when a party to a lawsuit abuses the courts by bringing totally meritless claims or applications. To get a CRO, a claimant must make take two separate applications that a judge formally records as totally without merit.
14. Fourteen. Four-teen. That is a special and magical number. It is also the number of times a judge has restrained Mandy Richards, Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Worcester from using the courts without permission to protect the public and individuals from her.
The courts do not make such orders lightly – it takes two completely meritless – utterly worthless – applications in the same proceedings (lawsuit) to get one. So, just who has Mandy Richards been suing? Apparently –
- MI5
- MI6
- the Metropolitan police
- the army
- Thames Water
- her gas, electricity and broadband suppliers
- the Royal Mail
- Hackney Council
- her GP
- the freeholder of her flat
In a separate case she claimed that the Labour Right group Progress and a returning officer in the 2016 London Assembly elections conspired against her. When all of the cases failed, Mandy Richards claimed it was due to sexism and racism – because she was a black woman.
Much as I dislike Progress and indeed Labour, it has to be said that Mandy Richards connection to reality is somewhat … frayed. This is not even dishonesty. These claims read like a classic paranoid delusion not even a traditional leftist conspiracy theory. The important question here is how did this person get selected?
Chillingly, Mandy Richards’ website boasts a wide range of high-powered endorsements (archive) of individuals said to be endorsing her candidature. These include Actor and Director David Morrisey, Lord Glasman, Chi Onwurah MP, former councillor Hugh Thomson, Councillor Patrick Vernon OBE, Sophie Lusby (a public sector worker), Jermain Jackman – Hackney North and Stoke Newington CLP Youth Coordinator and Soraya Adejare Hackney North EMF and BAME Secretary.
All of these people are quoted as endorsing Ms Richards in glowing terms. How is it that she was able to hoodwink so many people?
The answer lies in Labour’s obsession with social justice and the extreme forms of positive discrimination it uses in its selection procedures. To promote the inclusion of allegedly, “oppressed” groups Labour has introduced not only all-women shortlists but all-ethnic shortlists. One selection I attended in my time in Labour included a flowchart of the various minorities that had to be considered before selecting a white male.
When these measures have failed Labour has not considered that there may be a fundamental flaw with the problems but instead it has repeatedly doubled down. In some places, questioning an ethnic minority candidate is itself considered racist.
I suggest that far from reducing racism and sexism Labour’s approach actively encourages it. The politics of identity is the politics of division and ironically, empowers white supremacism. If you are a white woman, passed over in favour of an ethnic candidate best known for their delusionally paranoid lawsuits – let alone a white male, why would you support Labour? The Party that regards you as the enemy to be excluded and disadvantaged – to be put down in favour of even the weakest and most questionable candidates from other groups?
Many members of minority groups recognise the profoundly toxic and corrosive nature of the current value set promoted by so-called “Social Justice Warriors”. During the #GamerGate scandal, female gamers even created a movement called #NotYourShield made up of women and members of sexual and ethnic minorities calling for the Left to stop using their protected characteristics for their own gain. Naturally the far Left denounced #NotYourShield as a manipulation by 4chan – another paranoid left-wing conspiracy theory.
Labour and the Left need to abandon identity politics before their obsession creates the hatred and strife that at present exists only in their feverish delusions.
