Now any of us can have what is colloquially called ‘a bad day at the office’, but the Labour MP Claudia Webbe’s performance in front of a Parliamentary committee goes far beyond that. In the video below we see Ms Webbe facing Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab via video link and coming across as either as thick as two short planks or spectacularly badly briefed. If we are to be charitable then it’s badly briefed but if we are not then in Ms Webbe we have a prime example of a person who really doesn’t really have what it takes to do the job she’s got.
She repeatedly asks the question of the Foreign Secretary about whether or not the UK Government will be taking legal action against Belarus and even then she could not quite get the name of the country fully correct. Every time Ms Webbe repeated the question the Foreign Secretary asked in reply ‘what legal action’? Claudia Webbe had obviously not thought her question through properly. She was asking for legal action but could not specify what that legal action could be.
This video is replete with long pauses and gormless stares at the camera by Ms Webbe as she dug herself further and further into a hole of her own digging. I don’t think I’ve seen a performance by a Parliamentarian that is this bad since Diane Abbott made her televised and very famous ‘maths gaffe’ or Jess Phillips when arguing with a group of Islamic fundamentalists in the street told them that they were doing Islam all wrong.
Here’s the video
But it gets worse. Someone has dug up what is claimed to be her application to the Labour Party to become an MP. I’ve no provenance as to whether or not this is genuine but it’s notable that there is a massive spelling error on the form namely the name of the Poplar and Limehouse constituency which in this document is spelled ‘Popular and Limehouse’. I’m pretty shocked by this as the word ‘Poplar’ is part of Labour movement history via the story of the 1921 Poplar Rates Revolt. Surely someone as steeped in Labour Party history as a Labour Party MP should be, either Webbe herself or one of her assistants would have noticed this error.
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Sadly these are not the only times that Ms Webbe has made a massive and laughable gaffe. A while ago she tweeted out a map of colonial Africa, a quite well known one in fact, and tried to claim that this is a part of African history that Britain was hiding from Britons, presumably mostly from Black Britons and that the establishment didn’t want people to know about this map. I laughed my head off when I saw her tweet as the map she showed was merely a bog standard map of various colonial possessions in Africa at the height of the time of colonialism, a map known by many and in fact by anybody with a passing interest in history.
The people of Leicester East are being poorly served by an MP who doesn’t know history, doesn’t know how to ask a decent question and in addition is awaiting trial for harassing a woman. It’s frightening to think that not only is this poor specimen currently a Labour MP but previously she was linked to crime prevention by being the chair of the Operation Trident Independent Advisory Group, which is supposed to be dealing with the epidemic of black on black gun violence that afflicts London. After seeing her performance on the above video and looking at her background and past idiocies, I can’t but help think that the people of Leicester East deserve much better than Claudia Webbe to represent them.
Digging a hole?
Given the silences more like sinking into quicksand with intermittent flailing about in vain.
LOL. I do believe that you may be correct. Apparently according to Guido La Webbe is getting soundly mocked from all sides all over the net. How she’s dealing with this mockery especially on Twitter is to DM the critics, scream ‘racist’ at them and then block them so that they can’t reply. That behaviour should give us all some measure of just how scummy this particular MP really is. People are not mocking her for her race, although they might be mocking her habit of race baiting, they are mocking her for her failure to properly do the job that she is paid £80k plus to do.
This entity, together with other intellectual & cultural giants such as Abbot at Lammy, is a good indication of what happens when the candidates are selected and elected purely by the colour of their skin.
Obviously, since no white person was selected or elected, this has absolutely nothing to do with racism. In much the same way that “the authorities” tell us that a knife-wielder shouting “Allah Akbar” whilst hacking and stabbing people has nothing to do with Islam.
The mockery on Twitter is really funny.
https://twitter.com/stephenpollard/status/1412495320622174212
The people are mostly being witty (at least the ones I’ve seen) rather than nasty or ‘racist’, but then THEY’VE HURT HER FEELINGS!! OH THE HORRIBLE RACIST SCUM!!!!!!!
I’m sure the other parties have equally vacuous people, but either they have been told in no uncertain terms to keep their mouths shut or lucky enough not be caught on TV.
But I do find it quite depressing to think that someone of that level of intellect might actually end up as leader of the Labour party, what with David “mastermind” Lammy, Dianne “the mathematician with two left shoes” Abbott and now Claudia “the Geographer” Webbe to name but three.
I certainly agree that the vast majority of the mockery that Webbe is getting is not in any way shape or form ‘racist’. It’s mostly mocking her for her obvious stupidity or poor preparation. Yes all parties have foolish people but they are either kept out of the way or heavily ‘guided’ so as to not embarrass the party.
It is pretty depressing that in a nation that requires a functional Opposition to properly work that someone of the poor calibre that Webbe is gets elected. It’s important to note that it’s not just Labour’s Black MP’s who are noteworthy for their stupidity, don’t forget Richard ‘Monobraincell’ Burgon is the MP for Leeds East.
Between the 1970s and the 1980s they vastly improved the quality of their tractors, is that what she was on about?
Regarding the map of Africa, I must admit that I was enlightened by it. With regard to colonialism in the region, it would appear that the worst offenders were the French. Why then does Britain continue to get all the blame?
Yes the French, Italians, Germans, Spanish and Portuguese were all colonial powers yet the bulk of the whining about Empire is aimed at the UK, something not quite right there. Although all imperial powers had committed wrongs at times against the native populations, Britain’s Empire, although it had its faults and things that we shouldn’t be too proud of like the Amritsar Massacre, was not nearly as brutal as the Belgian Empire for example.
As I understand it the British colonies tended to raise the standard of living of the locals by a considerable margin. There was a lot wrong with the set up of course, the locals were effectively second class citizens in their own homeland. I seem to recall that Rhodesia was a relatively wealthy country until Mugabe took it over.
Agree there that the British Empire brought a lot of development and we should acknowledge this positive aspect whilst at the same time being aware of and acknowledging the negatives. Rhodesia was the breadbasket of Southern Africa until the corrupt tyrant Mugabe came on the scene. I was politically aware at the time of the Lancaster House talks and I really hoped that things would change for the better there, sadly I was wrong and all the safeguards for minorities and less favoured tribes in that country were thrown out of the window by Mugabe.
The map looks a bit wrong. Mauretania is marked as Spanish rather than French and Spanish Sahara is marked as French. And they’ve left out British Somaliland.
Good point. However this is Webbe’s Map. I’ve found another map that might be a little more accurate