The Liberal Democrat peer Lord Strasburger has called for the House of Lords’ conduct rules to be strengthened after no action was taken on a complaint that the Conservative peer Michelle Mone sent an allegedly racist message to a man of Indian heritage.
Strasburger has also said Mone should resign from the Lords due to the complaint, which alleges that she told the man, Richard Lynton-Jones, he was “a waste of a man’s white skin”. Mone is accused of sending the messages, screenshots of which have been seen by the Guardian, during a disagreement after a fatal yacht crash off Monaco in May 2019.
In the weeks after the crash, in which a crew member was killed, Mone accused Lynton-Jones and his partner of partying soon after the accident and showing disrespect. Mone cast doubt on whether Lynton-Jones’s partner had really suffered serious trauma due to the accident, and described her as “a mental loony.”
Lynton-Jones messaged Mone saying his partner had been seriously traumatised, and wrote: “I would prefer you back the fuck off.” According to the complaint and the screenshots of the WhatsApp messages, Mone then responded:
“You & your mental loony of a girlfriend have been parting [sic] like mad! … Your [sic] a low life, a waste of a mans [sic] white skin so don’t give us your lies. Your [sic] a total disgrace.”
She added: “Now you deal with the police enquiries including your nut case bird.”
Lynton-Jones sent an immediate reply in which he said: “A waste of a white mans skin? Did not know you were racist, Michelle.”
He told the Guardian that Mone’s WhatsApp message had caused him severe distress, reminding him of racist abuse and serious assaults he had suffered in the 1980s and 90s. He said that for personal reasons he did not want to be named in any reporting, but after the Guardian’s publication on Thursday, on Saturday the Daily Mail named him as the complainant.
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