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Sir Keir told LBC News: “Get on with the job of teaching people.
“Let’s get our feet back firmly on the ground and teach the students.
“Students have been through hell in the last 18 months you know – cooped up in flats, six at a time, quite often all of them have got Covid because they’ve given it to one another.
“They have been amongst the hardest hit in the last 18 months.”
The Oxford uni college has rejected calls to remove the statue of Rhodes.
Removing the statue from the Grade-II listed building is likely to be expensive because of legal battles involved in getting permission, the college’s Governing Body has said.
An independent commission on the statue’s legacy supported its removal along with a plaque honouring Rhodes on King Edward Street.
In a May statement the college said: “In light of the considerable obstacles to removal, Oriel’s Governing Body has decided not to begin the legal process for relocation of the memorials.”
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Sir Keir’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn has also condemned the statue, telling the student newspaper Cherwell: “Cecil Rhodes was racist.”
He added: “He subjugated and killed large numbers of people in what became Rhodesia and eventually Zimbabwe and Zambia, and made a great deal of money out of diamond mining and others in South Africa.
“I don’t see a need to venerate his life at all.”
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