On the night of the Oldham West and Royton by-election result I accused the Labour Party of engaging in “dangerous identity politics.” The result of me uttering this sentence on TV was that the political journalists both local and national went into a spin. Labour politicians were also horrified and tried to suggest I was being racist, which of course I wasn’t, and they knew it. Indeed, calling someone is a “racist” is the fall back tactic for Labour politicians when they know they’ve been rumbled. By “dangerous identity politics”, I meant ditching one’s own values and pandering to the prejudices of others. And the Labour Party is doing this on an increasingly regular basis, which I maintain is dangerous politics. They did this on a minor scale in Oldham when Labour politicians (both Oldham MPs and local councillors) attended a meeting that was segregated on the basis of gender. This meeting was organised by the Labour Friends of Bangladesh and was a political meeting, not a religious one. Labour of course denied the meeting was gender segregated, but it was obvious to anyone who saw the photos that men and women were sitting on opposite sides of the room.