Labour suspends Neil Coyle after racist comments to Insider reporter
House of Commons
- Coyle told Insider's Henry Dyer, who is British-Chinese, that he looked "like you've been giving renminbi" to Barry Gardiner.
- Gardiner, another MP, was found to have received money from a suspected Chinese spy.
- Labour suspended the whip from Coyle pending an investigation.
Labour has suspended the whip from Neil Coyle MP after Insider revealed that he made racist comments toward one of its reporters.
Coyle, MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, made the comments to Insider's Henry Dyer at one of Parliament's bars.
The pair had been discussing Barry Gardiner, another Labour MP whose relationship with lobbyist Christine Lee had come under the spotlight after she was identified by MI5 as a possible spy. Gardiner had employed her son and received donations from Lee.
During a conversation in the Strangers' Bar inside the Palace of Westminster, Coyle said Gardiner was being "paid by Fu Manchu."
Dyer wrote that it was "a comment that struck me at the time as not right, given it had been well reported who had been giving Gardiner money, and so there was no need to refer to a 20th century trope of a Chinese supervillain."
Coyle then told Dyer he looked "like you've been giving renminbi to Barry Gardiner."
On Friday morning, a Labour spokesperson said: "The Labour Party expects the highest standards of behaviour from all our MPs and we take allegations of this sort very seriously.
"Accordingly the chief whip has now suspended the Labour whip from Neil Coyle pending an investigation."
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