The Labour MP David Lammy has blamed the decision by Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to blacken his face at a party on pervasive racist tropes that even “liberal leaders” succumb to, as he made calls to tackle white supremacy and privilege.

Speaking at a fringe event at the party’s conference in Brighton, the anti-racism campaigner spoke out about old pictures that have emerged of Trudeau in blackface, including one of him dressed up for an Arabian Nights themed gala while still a teacher in 2001.

“I am so sad that it’s still the case in 2019 that [there are] so many of these very simplified tropes about people of colour. And it’s why even a liberal western leader, in a progressive country like Canada, not that long ago thought it was cool to black up his face,” the MP for Tottenham said.

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Trudeau has apologised for wearing what he now sees as a “racist and hurtful” costume that was unacceptable because of the history of blackface.

In a passionate address to a Show Racism the Red Card event organised by the union Unite, Lammy told the audience “I’m going to be a bit provocative”, before saying there needed to be more open discussion about white supremacy to try to “unpick” it as a structural problem, adding: “It’s a subject we don’t like to talk about.

“White supremacy is not confined to strange men in the Deep South who put on white cloaks, it is not confined to strange gatherings of the English Defence League.

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“That is what some would like you to believe it is ... it is a system, it is a structure, it is a structure that began when fake scientists and great people - even Charles Darwin - determined that there were one group of people who more important, more learned, clever, a whole set of attributes that were better than other people of colour.

“It set up the basis in which most of the western world was built, and it’s very hard to unpick and get underneath that.

“But unless we are really honest and want to talk about white supremacy, not to guilt people out but to have the conversation, I am afraid you kick out individual racists, but you don’t change the system.”

Lammy also renewed his attack on the television presenter Stacey Dooley for displaying “white privilege” when she shared a photograph on social media of her holding a black child on a charity visit in Uganda in February, alongside the caption “obsessed”.

He said: “This is not about you Stacey Dooley, it’s about the child. It’s about the village. It’s about why they are poor. They are here because of a history, and a history of white supremacy. So please Stacey Dooley use your platform to talk about that.”

Dooley said in February that Lammy could travel to Uganda himself if he wanted to help and questioned whether he had picked her up on her image purely because she was white.

At the time, the charity Comic Relief thanked her for her work to raise awareness of its project in Uganda.