Janet Jones ⚖️#50sWomen #CEDAW♀️51% 💙

Ed Davey, "Our politics has been affected by poisonous ideas, like the idea that people born in England are not English because they're not white" "Shamefully, even some in this house have argued for this racist ideology" "We must reject it" Andy Burnham, "On some issues we should rise above party politics, and should recognise when things are completely unacceptable" "We must move on from a decade of division and drift, we must bring people back together" "I am interested in working with anyone in this house who shares that aim" My view: Nobody should have to stand in the country where they were born and defend their right to belong because of the colour of their skin. The idea that a white person’s Englishness is automatic while everyone else’s is conditional is racism. Dressing it up as a debate about identity does not make it respectable. The clear backdrop to Davey and Burnham’s criticism is Reform UK MP Suella Braverman’s argument that Englishness rests on ancestry and ethnicity, and that she cannot claim it despite being born and educated here. She is entitled to describe her own identity. That does not give her the right to define other people’s belonging for them. Davey is right to challenge this, and Burnham’s offer to work across party lines deserves support. But unity needs more than warm words: it needs a clear refusal to indulge racism for votes, headlines or political advantage. You cannot bring people together while treating some of them as permanently foreign in their own country.