Labour rejects racism claims

If US President-elect Barack Obama had been British, he would have been unable to break through to win power, said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Mr Phillips told The Times: "If Barack Obama had lived here, I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power within the Labour Party...

"The parties and unions and think-tanks are all very happy to sign up to the general idea of advancing the cause of minorities but in practice they would like somebody else to do the business. It's institutional racism."

However, he later appeared to back away from the comments, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme that barriers to gaining political office affected women and the working class, as well as ethnic minorities.

It was "absurd" to suggest Labour had a particular problem with race, when the party had 13 of the 15 ethnic minority MPs in Westminster, he conceded.

Labour chair Harriet Harman welcomed Mr Phillips' clarification, adding: "Labour is the party that has always championed equality. It was Labour MPs who broke down the barriers, starting with Bernie Grant, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott and now with six times more black and Asian MPs than all the other parties put together.

Fabian general secretary Sunder Katwala dismissed Mr Phillips' comments as "damaging, insulting and out of date".

"Just a year ago, Trevor didn't think that Barack Obama could win the Democratic nomination or the US Presidency," said Mr Katwala. "Now he's telling us there can't be a British Obama. But Margaret Thatcher said there would not be a woman Prime Minister in her lifetime. We don't need the politics of No We Can't when that flies in the face of the evidence. The answer is: Yes We Can."

Labour minister for social cohesion Sadiq Khan insisted Britain could elect a black PM. "Yes, we could," he said. "I meet and I work with very talented, very able black and Asian politicians and I know from speaking to my constituents that our electorate is very sophisticated and we judge our politicians by their policies, character and values and not by the colour of their skin."