Sir Keir Starmer has come under pressure to suspend a Labour MP after she shared a tweet describing Kemi Badenoch as representing “white supremacy in blackface”.

Dawn Butler retweeted a post from Nigerian-British author Nels Abbey which branded the new Tory leader as a “member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class” before later deleting it.

But the Prime Minister is facing calls to remove the Labour whip from the Brent East MP.

Tory MP Ben Obese-Jecty said Ms Butler was “not alone on the Government benches in holding this view of Kemi”.

He said: “This will be a test to see whether Keir Starmer removes the whip, or effectively condones Butler’s abhorrent approval of this smear.”

Former Conservative chancellor Kawsi Kwarteng told GB News: “On a personal level I’ve always got on with her, but her race-baiting is completely crazy.

“And you can imagine that if Kemi had lost, she’d have said exactly the same thing. She’d have said ‘of course Kemi lost, because the Tories are racist and Britain is racist’… In their logic, they put everything through the prism of race-baiting and divisiveness.

“I genuinely think that given what she said, she should have the whip removed from her. There should be some discipline and some disciplinary measure against this kind of really hateful divisiveness.”

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Speaking to journalists at the Interpol general assembly in Glasgow earlier today, the Prime Minister said the Brent East MP was “quite right” to delete the retweet.

Pressed on demands to strip her of the Labour whip, Sir Keir said: “She shouldn’t have said what she did and she has deleted it and quite right too.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper also condemned the contents of the social media post that Ms Butler shared.

Asked why no action had been taken against Ms Butler, she said: “As I said, I haven’t seen the post and I think those sorts of issues around party issues, those are always ones for the Whip.”

The PM and Foreign Secretary David Lammy were among other Labour figures who hailed Ms Badenoch’s election on Saturday as the first black leader of a major UK party as a historic moment.

In later posts, Mr Abbey said his original comments had been “clearly satirical” and “intended as a sketch”.

But he defended Ms Butler saying she “may not welcome the ascendancy of an extremely right-wing reactionary black person”.

He added: “Because of stuff like this, which is vehement political disagreement, it is both fair and to be expected that many black people may not view Badenoch as (leader of the opposition) to be a ‘proud moment for our nation’ in the same way as, say, Keir Starmer does (or is politically mandated to).”