UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has pointed out an image of a president of the Bank of America was published and incorrectly labelled as him.
The photo, taken outside the HM Treasury office on Horse Guards Road, shows Bernard Mensah, president for international at the US bank, leaving the building.
But it was used in an online article on the Daily Mirror’s website with the headline “Kwasi Kwarteng says he had to do ‘something different’ after causing budget chaos”.
The chancellor pointed out the error on Twitter, saying: “That isn’t me.”
Others have called for the news outlet to apologise and pointed out that the mistake, which meant a photo of a different prominent black man was used instead of Kwarteng, came on the first day of Black History Month – an annual observance recognising the triumphs and struggles of black people throughout history.
The screenshot of the Mirror’s website showing the use of the wrong image also includes a banner displaying the newspaper’s own Black History Month campaign calling for British Black history to be included on the national curriculum.
Addressing the incident, the Mirror tweeted: “This morning a picture in a story about Kwasi Kwarteng was wrongly captioned on the Mirror website.
“This was a terrible error and we apologise to Mr Kwarteng and all our readers.
“The Mirror has a long history of working against racism and we will redouble our efforts on this.”
Conservative politician and former journalist Shaun Bailey shared a screenshot of the mistake commenting: “For a second I thought this was me, then I remembered that we don’t all look the same.”
It comes just days after a Labour MP was suspended from her party after describing the chancellor as “superficially” black.
Sir Keir Starmer described Rupa Huq’s comment as clearly “racist” and welcomed the party taking “very swift action”.
She offered a “sincere and heartfelt” apology to Kwarteng over her “ill-judged” comments after being criticised by senior figures in her own party.
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