A Green councillor in Lewisham has been cleared of a conduct complaint after she described David Lammy and Priti Patel as “coconuts” on the social media platform, X. An investigation has found Cllr Hau-Yu Tam did not breach the Council’s Code of Conduct when she retweeted posts on her X account, which included criticisms of Israel and Zionism.
Investigation outcome
The outcome of the investigation was formally upheld by Lewisham Council’s Standards Sub-Committee during a meeting on Monday, July 20. A complaint had been made by the then-Labour Mayor of Lewisham, Brenda Dacres, in April 2025, who accused Cllr Tam of reposting “anti-Semitic material” and alleged her “coconuts” comment was racist.
In her complaint, Ms Dacres said Cllr Tam had shared “abhorrent and unlawful material” which demonstrated “clear, extensive and serious breaches of the Code”.
The 'coconuts' comment
On March 20, 2025, Cllr Tam posted a comment under a tweet from Mish Rahman in which she said: “It’s reminiscent of Priti Patel admitting her family wouldn’t get in under her own immigration rules, but somehow even more callous. These coconuts.” The post included a Telegraph heading with an image of Mr Lammy with the words: “Guaranteed Lammy claims more ‘benefits’ than his family member but there’s a difference, his family member needs those benefits to survive, Lammy and MPs on a 90k plus salary don’t need them at all, they just feel entitled to it.”
Cllr Tam has since deleted her comment from X and apologised for using the term, stating it was not appropriate. In her apology, she said she was “not going after the colour of their skin, but rather their mentality”.
Legal findings
An independent investigation by Kirsty Cole, a consultant at Bevan Brittan, said Cllr Tam’s remark fell under the protection of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which provides the right to freedom of expression. Ms Cole explained that Article 10 could be used because Cllr Tam’s comment was “clearly political in nature,” and not a personalised attack.
She said that while the comment was offensive and insulting, it was not racist in legal terms. Ms Cole referred to an Appeals Tribunal Decision from 2009 and said that had Cllr Tam made the comment in the council chamber to another councillor, she would have “undoubtedly” found it to be a code breach.
Ms Cole added: “Because she made that comment about national politicians in the context of their policies, I took the view that it was a political comment. It wasn’t directed to them personally in that sense.”
Zionism retweets
On Cllr Tam’s retweets from March 2025 which said “Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished” and “Zionism is undoubtedly, unquestionably the Nazism of our time”, the investigation concluded Cllr Tam was criticising Zionism as a political ideology and were not expressions of hatred for Jewish people.
During the meeting, Ms Cole referred to case law, saying: “Putting it in very, very simplistic terms, hostility or prejudice against Jewish people would constitute anti-Semitism, but criticism of the State of Israel would not constitute anti-Semitism as it falls within the protection of Article 10.”
On one of the retweets, Ms Cole said: “My conclusion was that there was nothing in the post by Cllr Tam to suggest hostility towards the Jewish people, her criticism was effectively directed towards the policies adopted by Israel, and in her interview with me she explained that it related to policies and to actions within Gaza.”
Committee decision
The investigation also found that Cllr Tam was not in breach of conduct and did not fail to promote equality and did not discriminate unlawfully against any person or fail to treat people with respect, when she retweeted a quote tweet from Lowkey in April 2025 about former Labour MP, Dan Norris and “Israel lobbyists”.
In their conclusion, the Standards Sub-Committee said they did not find that Cllr Tam’s social media posts were anti-Semitic or racist, nor that they breached the Council’s Code of Conduct.
Chair of the Committee, Cllr Briony Edwards, said: “We find that the anti-Zionist tweets were a legitimate political and ideological commentary, however, the ‘coconuts’ [remark] was more problematic.
“Although we agree with the recommendations, we would like to express our disappointment at this. While there has not been a breach of the Code of Conduct, we feel that the behaviour of Cllr Tam with respect to the ‘coconuts’ tweet fell below the standard that we would expect of councillors at Lewisham.”
Cllr Edwards added: “We would suggest that she carefully considers the comments that she makes in public or on social media platforms, in particular we are mindful that expressions such as ‘coconut’ may be deeply offensive to some members of the public and this is not something we want to be associated with in Lewisham.”
Response from Cllr Tam
Posting on Instagram the following day (July 21), Cllr Tam thanked “from the bottom of my heart everyone who stood by me during this ordeal”.
Cllr Tam, who is Cabinet Member for Communities, Sanctuary and Healing, said of the investigation: “The harm to my health and wellbeing has been enormous, which in turn and amongst other things, affected my ability to work alongside my councillor role.
“This was deliberate – just like [Andy] Burnham’s unscrupulous attempt to appear more human on Gaza than [Keir] Starmer, and just like Labour’s silence on their own sitting politicians’ racism.”
Cllr Tam said with the investigation concluded, she is looking forward to “carrying on delivering for our communities”.
