MP admits to using blackface to attend Blues Brothers fancy dress party as James Brown

Member for New Forest West, Sir Desmond Swayne, made the controversial admission in a blog post in which he defended Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, who is himself at the centre of a ‘brownface’ scandal after images showed he went to an Arabian Nights party as Aladdin.

In a post entitled ‘Trudeau’s Turban’ published earlier this week, Sir Desmond said: “It comes to something when you can’t dress-up as Aladdin without attracting the opprobrium of the ‘great and good’.

“He would have done better to have said it was an entirely acceptable bit of fun and refused to apologise.

“I suspect that Justin Trudeau’s cringing apology for blacking himself ‘blinded by his own white privilege’ has done him rather more harm than the original offence.

“It was a themed ‘Arabian Nights’ fancy-dress party for heaven’s sake!”

He then said he had once attended a Blues Brothers themed fancy-dress party as the ‘Godfather of Soul’ James Brown.

“I went to some trouble to be as authentic as possible,” he said.

“I can assure readers of this column that I have no intention of apologising.”

Sir Desmond said that constituents often wrote to him having been “infuriated by some latest absurdity of political correctness".

“I tell them that the best response is simply to laugh at it,” he said, adding that the Trudeau affair was a ‘storm in a tea-cup’ and that ‘the world has gone mad’.

The Echo asked him if he could see why some black and Asian people found this form of make-up offensive.

“I can’t,” he replied, adding that: “No one’s complained to me about it.”

He then said he would probably not repeat the experience because: “The reason why I wouldn’t do it again is because you have to go to some trouble to get it (the make-up) off.

“It’s not a non-trivial exercise.”

The Echo was contacted by a constituent of Sir Desmond’s who said: “As a resident within his constituency I find it absurd that he has posted this and not been challenged for it.”