As I’ve noted previously, the UK’s Conservative Party is mired in an Islamophobia problem that it refuses to acknowledge. This week, many Conservative party members and members of Parliament were caught using explicitly racist terms, yet the issue was largely shrugged off by the media. The terms were openly racist and antisemitic. The stark difference in the media’s treatment of the Conservative Party and Labour is particularly visible after the incidents this week — had any Labour MP said what numerous Tories did, an aggressive media onslaught would have been inevitable. Instead we saw journalists caveating their reporting of the terms the Tory MPs used.

On Monday night, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that the band of MPs who visited Theresa May for an emergency meeting had taken to calling themselves “Grand Wizards.” Twitter instantly pointed out that the term is used by the Ku Klux Klan. Even former Tory chancellor George Osborne asked, “I’m sorry, is this for real?” But there was little blowback apart from Twitter consternation, which passed quickly. On Radio 4’s Today, a morning political program, a presenter used the term “Grand Wizards” casually on Wednesday, with no reference to its Klan links. That the Tory group didn’t know is entirely unlikely: more likely they didn’t realize the name would leak to the press.

On Tuesday afternoon, at a meeting of the Conservative-aligned, Bruges Group, MP Suella Braverman told an emergency meeting on Brexit, “We are engaged in a war against cultural Marxism” and warned about free speech at universities in the UK. After the speeches, as the microphone was passed around for questions, I challenged her use of the term, pointing out its antisemitic history, and the fact it was a key theory for mass murderer Anders Breivik. She doubled down on her use of the phrase: “Yes, I do believe that we are in a fight against cultural Marxism. We have a culture evolving from the far left which is about snuffing out freedom of speech . . .  It’s absolutely damaging for our spirit as British people and British genius . . .  I’m very, very worried about this creep of cultural Marxism that has come from Jeremy Corbyn.” Braverman’s office was asked for comment on her use of the term, but remained silent.