Jeremy Corbyn calls Trump’s racist tweets racist

Labour leader criticises Tory leadership candidates for refusing to use the word ‘racism’ to describe US President’s comments

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said tweets by Donald Trump in which he suggested four Congresswomen of colour should “go home” are racist.

His attack came after the two contenders for the Conservative leadership refused to use the word “racist” to describe the US President’s comments.

Mr Corbyn accused Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt of “pandering” to Trump in the hope of striking a trade deal with the US after Brexit.

“Telling four Congresswomen of colour to ‘go back’ is racist,” the Labour leader tweeted.

“But the Tory leadership candidates can’t bring themselves to say so. We should stand up to Donald Trump, not pander to him for a sweetheart trade deal which would put our NHS at risk.”

Mr Trump has sparked outrage with a series of posts on Twitter in which he suggested that Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib should ”go back” to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.

Appearing together on Capitol Hill, the four – all but one of whom were born in the United States – said Trump was trying to stir up racial division as a “disruptive distraction” from issues of concern to American citizens. Ms Omar said he should be impeached.

But Mr Trump doubled down on his comments when asked if he was concerned that many people considered his tweets racist, telling reporters: “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me. All I’m saying, they want to leave, they can leave. Now, it doesn’t say leave forever. It says leave if you want.”

At a leadership debate hosted by The Sun and TalkRadio on Monday, Mr Johnson branded Trump’s comments “totally unacceptable”, saying: “If you are the leader of a great multiracial, multicultural society you simply cannot use that kind of language about sending people back to where they came from.”

But pressed on whether the comments were racist, he said only: “I simply can’t understand how a leader of that country can come to say it... You can take from what I said what I think about President Trump’s words.”

Asked the same question, Mr Hunt said he would be “utterly appalled” if anyone told his half-Chinese children to go back to China.

“It is totally un-British to do that and so I hope that would never happen in this country,” he said.

Challenged on whether the comments were “racist”, he replied: “I think that, look I’m foreign secretary, this is a president of a country which happens to be our closest ally and so it is not going to help the situation to use that kind of language about the president of the United States.”