Labour was hit by a race row yesterday as an activist in the Momentum group, which backs Jeremy Corbyn, was accused of branding party MP Chuka Umunna as not “politically black”.
The highly charged words came in a speech by academic Marlene Ellis, a member of Umunna’s local party.
They were taken by some as a direct assault on the leading moderate MP, who was listed as “hostile” to his party’s leader Corbyn in a leaked loyalty list.
In a rapid backlash, Umunna’s  supporters accused Momentum of “poisonous, divisive behaviour”.
Labour’s mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan was also quick to condemn the “offensive remarks” as Tory opponents highlighted how Momentum is campaigning for him this week.
In a recording passed to the Standard, Ellis is heard claiming that her local Labour Party branch in Lambeth — where Umunna is MP for Streatham and she is a key figure — is “very, very Right-wing”.
She takes credit for working in the area to set up Momentum Black ConneXions, a splinter group aiming for more “black power”, adding that the “X” is in memory of the late African-American leader Malcolm X. Provoking laughter, she adds: “Frankly, there’ll be some black MPs that don’t align themselves with being politically black.”
She goes on to add that she is “tired of black MPs” and that she wanted “policy from a black perspective”.
One Labour MP said: “You don’t need a degree in race politics to work out she’s talking of the MP in her local party. The audience clearly got the joke.”
Umunna declined to comment yesterday but Ebenezer Taiye-Akinsanmi, a party member of 30 years who has worked with him, said the impression created by the speech misrepresented Umunna and other ethnic minority colleagues.
He added: “Chuka is a good representative. He does not just represent black and ethnic minority people, he represents everybody.”
A senior Labour source said the remarks in the speech were “disgraceful” and “highly offensive”, adding: “Poisonous, divisive behaviour like this has no place in Jeremy’s so-called kinder, gentler politics but typifies what Momentum has become.”
Tory MP and London Assembly member James Cleverly called on Khan to denounce the comments and break links with his mayoral campaign backers Momentum.
A spokesman for Khan said: “Sadiq condemns these offensive comments. There should be no place in the Labour Party for this nonsense.”
Ellis told the Standard her speech was “in no way an attack on Chuka”.
She added: “Our argument is that questions of race and racism should be foregrounded in politics and policy. That’s what political blackness is.
“We don’t think that politicians, black and white, have enough of a politically black perspective and would like to see more MPs, black and white, putting anti-racism and black liberation more at the heart of their politics.”