 Keir Starmer has promised a zero-tolerance approach to racism since becoming Labour leader. It was perhaps surprising then when we found out that Trevor Phillips had been secretly re-admitted into the Labour Party after his suspension for alleged Islamophobia. According to the Guardian, Phillips was reinstated at least three weeks ago, without the matter having gone to an NEC, National Executive Committee, disciplinary panel, as it should have. Critics of that decision have pointed to a paper agreed by the NEC in 2019, which states, except in cases of mistaken identity, only the NEC can choose to lift a suspension and issue a warning. Now, helpfully, Mr Phillips shared his suspension letter at the time, this is the last year or the year before 2019, with the charge being that he demonstrated hostility or prejudice to a race, religion or belief, something which it's important to say he denies. So what's the evidence of such a clay? Well, it's fair to say that Trevor Phillips is somebody who very much sees himself at the heart of the culture war. So let's get into specifics. In August 2017, Trevor Phillips called for the government to acknowledge that UK sex grooming gangs as a Muslim issue rather than Asian one, saying that it was faith that unites criminals such as those in the Rochdale child sex abuse ring. Yet, a home office report subsequently showed child sex abuse gangs were typically divided on race lines, but the majority were made up of white men under the age of 30. Perhaps more troublingly, Phillips is also on record as saying that British Muslims have again, quote, formed a nation within the nation with its own geography, its own values, and its very own separate future. Now, you may agree with that, you may disagree with that, you may think he has the right to say that, but I think most people would agree that if you said that about other minorities in the Labour Party, you wouldn't be allowed back in, certainly not in the way that Mr Phillips was. Furthermore, it seems that many senior Labour figures publicly don't have much of a problem with what Trevor Phillips has said in the past in regards to Islamophobia. Darlia, what's your take on this? Should Trevor Phillips still be suspended? It's hard to say, because I think the real question is, does this represent the values of the Labour Party? And that is something for the Labour Party to answer, not me. But I think the message that we've been given at least is very clear, which is that the Labour Party is deeply ashamed. And when I say the Labour Party, I mean primarily the upper echelons of the Labour Party, is deeply ashamed of its base. It's ashamed of young people. It's ashamed of Muslims. It's ashamed of trade unionists, unionists of black people. Look at how it responded to kill the bill protests, to the Black Lives Matter movement, or moment as Kirstama likes to call it. And I'm not sure where the Labour Party thinks they're going to get to by constantly acting so ashamed of the people that keep them, that essentially mean that they have the few seats in Parliament that they actually have. Trevor Phillips is kind of a key figure in sort of British parliamentary politics and state politics in Britain, because he is a symptom of a very particular kind of top-down state multiculturalism insofar as that has been used as a tool to kind of break anti-racist movements and break solidarity between racialised communities. Paul Gilroy wrote about this in the 1990s, which shows you how long this manoeuvre has been in the making, where a once sort of multi-racial, self-organised, anti-racist movements who populated trade unions, who worked on the streets, who worked at art institutions, etc., are sort of absorbed by the state, broken down into their little silos of communities whose interests are then positioned as entirely separate and sometimes actually oppositional to one another. So they're sort of encouraged to compete for state funding, for state resources, etc. And those communities are essentially represented by community leaders who, you know, are selected by the state but often completely unrecognisable in their own communities and with the communities that they actually are alleged to represent. And this is why despite being unrecognisable to so many of the communities and the people that he talks about, it seems like we hear an awful lot from Trevor Phillips. And we wonder, you know, why do we always hear so much of him and why there's so many people who are so willing to protect his reputation, even when he has kind of destroyed it amongst the very communities that he says he is speaking to and for. But this is basically just an appalling, very old-school technique employed by, you know, the ruling elite in Britain to divide and rule, to create an exceptionalised bogeyman against which you can pit all other communities. But it makes very little sense here because the exceptionalised bogeyman that you're trying to cultivate is your own base. So, you know, yeah, okay, we saw it in the Tory election campaign where Islamophobia was mobilised in order to cultivate support in non-Muslim ethnic minorities. But I'm just like, if you're the Labour Party where you rely so heavily on the Muslim vote, how do you think this is going to end up? Maybe something kind of similar to how the Red Wall ended up? And that's not going to end nicely for you. So that's kind of how I see where Trevor Phillips' intervention comes from and why he is so protected by the Labour Party, despite, you know, that seeming very counter-intuitive. And also why I think ultimately this is all going to really backfire on the Labour Party. Just response from a few Labour figures, Labour Muslim members and MPs universally condemning the news. This is from Apsana Begrim MP. His silent readmission, that's Trevor Phillips' Labour Party, without even as much as an explanation or apology, is an insult to my community to fellow Muslims' solidarity. I stand with you on another dark day. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Labour Muslim Network told Labour List. Trevor Phillips' case is one of the most high-profile recent examples of Islamophobia within the Labour Party and quietly re-admitting him behind closed doors without apology or acknowledgement will only cause further anxiety and hurt among Muslims. I mean, it's also important to say that, you know, the whole point of the HRC sort of debacle for Labour was that they were meant to have this independent complaints process. The second you have a high-profile case, which is somebody who is seemingly favoured by the leadership, they've just jettisoned the whole thing. And when I say he's close to the leadership, this is not just me making things up. You know, Trevor Phillips, Peter Mandelson was his best man, I believe. You know, he doesn't just share the same constituency Labour Party as Keir Starmer, they're in the same branch. And actually, people in that branch, as I understand it, have been making real noises about how the suspension against Trevor Phillips should end. Now, you might think he shouldn't be suspended. But again, I think it's inarguable the manner in which this has been handled. It's completely at odds with all of the recommendations from the HRC. And when you compare it, people said, oh, well, look, Jeremy Corbyn should get the whip back. Rebecca Longbailey shared an article on Twitter, and she was expelled from the shadow cabinet. This is somebody who's saying Muslims are a nation within a nation, and he's allowed back in the party. And I think people quite rightly say there's a double standard here. Darlia, what do you think the electoral kind of consequence of this would be? Because, you know, we had the battle and spend by election last week, and people thought that clearly Labour is being right now subjected to real difficulties with regards to its Muslim base, because there is a big perception of Islamophobia coming from certain parts of the party. And they seem to be almost consciously trying to inflame that. Now, of course, 20% of votes in battle and spend voted for George Galloway, but Labour held on. So presumably their bet is, going back to your previous point, they can alienate a big part of their base because they think that they're going to get some other people instead. And presumably that will be a bigger part of the public. Do you think that's a plausible bet even? Forget for a moment whether or not you agree with it. What it reminds me of, and it's funny you mentioned Peter Mandelson, because I believed that it was Peter Mandelson who basically dismissed any attempt to hold on to and, you know, sort of appeal to Northern Red War voters because he said that they have nowhere else to go. So, you know, it doesn't matter how much we sort of throw them under the bus, how much we exclude them from our policymaking, how much we exclude them from, you know, the way that our party operates, how much we kind of lump them with rubbish MPs as, you know, in a kind of game of political favours, because what are they going to do? We can rely on their vote. There's no point in engaging. But look, like I said, look where that led the party. And I think, you know, the vote in Batley and Spen, obviously, you know, they didn't lose the seat, but they won it by the skin of their teeth. And I think that we are starting to see this happen in the Muslim voter base too. And so the question therefore is, who's going to vote for you? A couple of converts from the Tory party, we know from the data that that's not where your actual voting constituency lies. And we know that you're not going to be able to do that on a scale large enough to actually win an election. And that's the political point. But the like, the I want to say moral point, I guess, that whole idea of, you know, Muslims are a nation within a nation, they are, you know, this sort of nefarious, you know, cabal that are sort of like plotting to take home, you get those are far right talking points. It reminds me of the like no go zone stuff that Tucker Carlson talks about. And it is especially especially in a when you've just one off the skin of your teeth in in Batley and Spen, like to kind of to allow and endorse the pandering to far right conspiracy theories that really do put the Muslim community in danger is frankly shocking. And I often say that I think a big part of the ways in which Jeremy Corbyn was kind of smeared as, you know, reactionary is, you know, at one point they were trying to say he was misogynistic. And then they say he's terrorist sympathizing. I think part of that was because he was seen as too uncomfortably close to the Muslim community to uncomfortably accepting of the Muslim community. And I often say that Jeremy Corbyn was the first, you know, white Protestant man to be a victim of Islamophobia, because I actually do think that that was part of the ways in which hatred against, you know, this kind of very disproportionate level of hatred against Jeremy Corbyn was kind of stirred up. It was through these kinds of dog whistles. He's close to Muslims. He's misogynistic. He's this, he's this, he's bringing in, you know, scary people into the party. And, you know, the voters are going to react to it just like they did in the Red Wall.