The left-wing Daily Mirror is under fire for confusing Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s first black Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a “random black guy in a suit”.
The leftist tabloid illustrated an article critical of the Chancellor with an image of a black man other than the Chancellor himself, prompting the Conservative MP to tweet a screengrab of it with the words “This isn’t me…”
The gaffe was quickly picked up by conservative activists, with Chris Rose, a popular black social media personality, remarking: “Either we changed chancellor overnight or The Mirror has confused a random black guy in a suit for Kwasi Kwarteng.”
“For a second I thought this was me, then I remembered that we don’t all look the same,” said Shaun Bailey, the black former Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.
“Good to see the Daily Mirror kicking off it’s [sic] coverage of Black History Month with this they-all-look-the-same-don’t-they clanger,” added Ben Obese-Jecty, a black Conservative Party association chairman, pursuing a similar theme.
“You’d think, given the coverage he’s received this week, that most people in the press would know what Kwasi Kwarteng looked like…”
“This morning a picture in a story about Kwasi Kwarteng was wrongly captioned on the Mirror website,” the newspaper said in a statement released on social media some time after the furore.
“This was a terrible error and we apologise to Mr Kwarteng and all our readers,” they grovelled.
“The Mirror has a long history of working against racism and we will redouble our efforts on this.”
The “random black guy” the Mirror confused with Chancellor Kwarteng has been identified as Bernard Mensah, President of International for Bank of America and Chief Executive Officer of Merrill Lynch International, in an STV News report.
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