The North East mayor has accused Reform’s deputy council leader in Durham of “inciting racism and hate”.
Labour mayor Kim McGuinness has hit out at “hideous” comments made on social media by Darren Grimes, the former GB News presenter who became an elected councillor earlier this year.
Cllr Grimes posted a video to his X account on Sunday, 24 August, of his brother on a boat trip in Scarborough alongside a number of non-white people – including children. He wrote alongside it: “My brother in Scarborough for a bank holiday weekend away. I had to ask him if he was on a dinghy to Dover, but then I realised there are women and children on board.”
The Labour Government has been under mounting pressure over recent weeks over the number of migrants crossing into the UK on small boats and the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.
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Replying to Cllr Grimes on Tuesday afternoon, Ms McGuinness said on X: “Come on @darrengrimes_?! This is hideous. Is this not just inciting racism and hate?
“How have we got to a world where an elected representative can post stuff like this unchallenged by his own party leadership or by journalists? This is not how Britain thinks.”
Cllr Grimes was elected as a councillor for Annfield Plain and Tanfield this May, when Reform took control of Durham County Council, and was subsequently made deputy leader of the council.
He also acts as a substitute member to the North East Combined Authority’s cabinet, which Ms McGuinness leads.
Cllr Grime told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Racism is believing one group is inferior to another, that is not what I said, and it is not what I believe. What’s truly hideous is Labour presiding over record migration Britain never voted for, while smearing anyone who notices it as guilty of ‘incitement.’ That’s exactly how political prisoner Lucy Connolly ended up behind bars.
“Love of country is not hate, and wanting to protect our communities is not racism. But presiding over migrant HMOs, hotels, and permanent influxes is antidemocratic and an obvious safeguarding risk. Both Kim McGuinness and this Labour government will be one-term wonders for ignoring the public while virtue-signalling on X as our country changes beyond recognition.”
