As Tory leadership hopefuls have entered the race, the Left has chosen to mock the ethnic minority contenders, says Mercy Muroki

One of the maxims I live by is : if you want something doing right, do it yourself.

Don’t complain that someone else it doing it all wrong, don’t sit there begruntled muttering under your breath, just do it yourself.

And that’s advice the Labour Party would do well to listen to.

Over the last few days, as the Tory leadership hopefuls have entered the race, the Left and its minions have taken it upon themselves to mock and ridicule the ethnic minority contenders.

Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu - agitator-in-chief - said that Nadhim Zahawi took the Chancellor job because he is, and I quote "a self serving shameless racial gatekeeper”.

She also said that Kemi Badenoch, rising star of the Conservatives, is a “gift for racists and white supremacists, who uses her black identity to legitimise systemic oppression” and “uses Black minority identity to run for Prime Minister”.

Dr. Shola sucks the life and normality out of discourse and replaces it with race and lunacy.

Barrister Jolyon Maugham – known as the Fox Slayer in some circles – tweeted this: “Do you think the members of your Party are ready to select a brown man, Rishi?”.

This was something I had to learn from third party sources since the man has blocked me on Twitter despite my having never had a single interaction for him. Perhaps he’s afraid of being challenged by brown woman?

And you have Nadine White, so-called ‘Race Correspondent’ for the Independent, who posed the question: “Can you imagine a Black or Asian person leading the Conservative Party? Others argue that the very concept is diametrically opposed to the party’s core values”.

To which I replied: "Isn’t the real, more logical, question to ask: Can you imagine a black or brown person leading the Labour Party – a party which has only ever produced one non-white Secretary of State?"

Or perhaps even: "Can you imagine a black of brown person leading the EU?"

Now we’d surely have to be in an alternative universe if that happened!

Back in 2019 I wrote this in The Times: “Labour must stop its demonisation of ethnic-minority Tories”.

At the time Labour MP Clive Lewis had said that “James Cleverly and the other black members of that cabinet had to sell [their] souls and self-respect to get there”.

In a previous incident then Labour MP Emma Dent-Coad called Shaun Bailey, the black Conservative mayoral candidate for London, a “token ghetto boy”.

It’s all a bit groundhog day this mudslinging at ethnic minority leadership hopefuls.

So I go back to that adage – if left wing want something doing right, if they want an ethnic minority leader that THEY approve of – do it yourself then.

Go on.

You win an election.

You crack on with nurturing talented ethnic minority MPs and getting them ministerial experience.

You elect your own ethnic minority leader.

Until you do that – and I won’t hold my breath – then just be quiet.

Shut it, put a sock in it, just sit this one out – and let the grown ups get on with it.