LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer suffered the humiliation of being called out on racism by a Tory Home Secretary today.

James Cleverly accused him of a “dog whistle” attack on Bangladeshis after Sir Keir had queried why they were not being deported from Britain more frequently.

Mr Cleverly said that Sir Keir had made “this weird dog whistle attack on the Bangladeshi community where he’s claiming that we are not returning people to Bangladesh — which was not true and not relevant because the Bangladeshi community make a tiny, tiny, tiny, less than a half a per cent of small boat arrivals.”

The Home Secretary claimed that he had been “quite shocked” by Sir Keir’s remarks, as racism continued to overshadow the last days of the general election campaign.

Labour was hit by another resignation over the issue, as councillor Shakila Hussain from Walsall quit, saying: “I cannot in good conscience associate myself with a party who so readily scapegoat an entire nationality to pander to voters. They refuse to apologise to date.

“Furthermore, while I have been vocal in my support for the civilians of Palestine and calling for an immediate ceasefire from the outset, it is harder to advocate for that from within Labour.”

Ms Hussain, who described Sir Keir’s comments as an “affront to my identity,” joins Tower Hamlets council deputy leader Sabina Akhtar in quitting the party.

She will remain on Walsall council as an independent.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been driven to distance himself from racism after candidates for Nigel Farage’s Reform party were recorded abusing him personally.

He said today that while Mr Farage had described the comments as “inappropriate,” he regarded them as “racist and appalling.”

“You’ve got now multiple Reform candidates and campaigners openly espousing racist and misogynistic views, seemingly without challenge, which tells you something about the culture within the Reform party,” Britain’s first ethnic minority premier added.

The revelations about Reform were also too much for one of its own candidates, Liam Booth-Isherwood in Erewash, who abandoned Reform and backed the local Tory candidate, saying that Farage was not taking racism within the party seriously.

“The reports of widespread racism and sexism in Reform have made clear that there is a significant moral issue within certain elements of the party, and the failure of the party’s leadership to fundamentally address it, has made clear to me that this is no longer a party I want to be associated with,” he said.

Sir Keir tried to claim that the gains by the far right in France show “that only progressives have the answers to the challenges that are facing us in this country and across Europe.

“We have to make that progressive call,” he said.

“But we have to understand why it is that people do feel disaffected with politics and continue to make that argument that politics is a force for good.”

Our political reporter writes…

The problem for the Labour leader is that people do not believe him.  A YouGov poll showed that the percentage regarding him as untrustworthy is now at a record high of 49 per cent.

That is not likely to halt his entry into Downing Street on Friday.  The Tories are focusing solely on trying to minimise the size of Labour’s majority.

Already Tory MPs are haggling over the rules for a leadership election expected to follow hard on the heels of anticipated defeat, and possible contenders are busy registering domain names for websites.

The Liberal Democrats meanwhile are ending their campaign as they have conducted it, as a sort of theme park promotion tour. 

Yesterday, leader Ed Davey did a bungee jump in Eastbourne while yelling “vote Liberal Democrat.”