Poppy Coburn is a journalist.
Do you remember being taught about so-called British values in school? I certainly do. PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education) lessons attempted to mould young Brits into upstanding citizens.
My post-Equality Act educational conditioning was certainly memorable, if only for the “five fingers of British values” class. Said values included: individual liberty, mutual respect, tolerance of different cultures – naturally, the middle finger – rule of law, and democracy.
I think it’s probably time for this Cameronite relic to be updated for the next Labour government, to better reflect the direction our country is travelling in; perhaps it would be wise to swap out liberty for ethno-narcissism.
The Guardian has reported that Labour “hopes to ensure black-led firms access lucrative government contracts” as part of their broader legislative push under the Racial Equality Bill, first mentioned by Marsha de Corvoda, the then-women-and-equalities-minister, in October 2020.
The proposal, which would give more “support” to “African heritage firms” to procure government contracts, is reminiscent of a similar scheme trialled in South Africa. Black Economic Empowerment is generally considered to have been a disastrous failure that crippled the ability to provide effective services, but helped the ANC consolidate its power by bribing black elites.
Parsing through the drip-feed of information around the Race Equality Bill is of vital importance for those of us who are apprehensive about the return of Labour to power.
The party has generally kept their cards close to their chest regarding the content of the Act, likely due to Starmer’s pragmatism; while party activists gnash their teeth at the supposed softening of Labour’s social programme, his team has directed their attention to obfuscating their message while quietly assuring key stakeholders that the content remains radical.
Jacqueline McKenzie, a prominent open-borders activist, and immigration lawyer, is one such stakeholder. She’s a member of the Race Equality Act consulting board, and has begun to speak to favourable press outlets about what the BAME community can expect from it.
McKenzie, typically of her industry, and holds quite radical views: she recently spoke on behalf of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) at an event entitled No More Detention Centres.
BID states on their annual return document that they worked with a 24-year-old Afghan client (their word) who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child, who they helped to get bailed out of prison. She’s unabashedly partisan, railing against the Conservative government and the “hostile environment” pursued by the Home Office.
McKensie is quoted extensively in a piece by the Voice. Some of the policy goals floated include ending deportations for illegal migrants who have lived in Britain since childhood, tackling school exclusion rates, the aforementioned BEE for Britain, and mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.
McKenzie, quoted in the piece, said that Labour wishes to build upon the legacy of the 2019 Race and Faith mini-manifesto authored by Dawn Butler, then shadow minister for women and equalities. The Laurence report, which was used as the impetus for Labour announcing the act, is also mentioned.
Labour has always been at the forefront of anti-discrimination legislation, being the party that brought us the Race Relations Act 1965 and the Equality Act 2010. But it seems rather pointless to introduce more primary legislation to push through what seems rather milquetoast reforms.
Ethnicity pay gap reporting, for example, is already supported by both the CBI and Theresa May, and could easily be facilitated within the framework of the Equality Act. We already have a degree of so-called positive action supported by section 159 of the Act, which allows an employer to take a protected characteristic into consideration when deciding who to recruit or to promote in a tie-break situation.
For example, a police service that employs a disproportionately low number of people from an ethnic minority background may give preferential treatment to a candidate from that background – a reading of the law that has provided much fodder for tabloids outraged at public sector reverse discrimination.
Labour may not run Westminster yet, but they do run the Senedd; Mark Drakeford launched a consultation into creating an “anti-racist Wales by 2030” after the death of George Floyd, around the same time the British Labour party began dropping hints about a Race Equality Bill.
Their plan, which was worked upon by dozens of ‘stakeholder’ groups like the Runnymede Trust, includes action that exceeds the already-controversial meddling of the Equality Act: ensuring that hate crimes will “no longer occur”, ensuring “white leaders” are “not resentful” of BAME talent, and ensuring that BAME people no longer “carry the emotional toil that triggers us daily”.
These proposals are unachievable by design. It is not so much the substance of the new Race Equality Bill that we should focus on, but rather the spirit in which it has been adopted.
As we can see from the above example, the new legislation will be divorced entirely from reality. Each and every issue raised in these reports and party-friendly journalism have been championed by charity-sector lobbyists keen to promote the fiction that Britain is a systemically racist country.
The third sector has traditionally played a central role in pushing through equalities legislation, and the Labour party has made no secret about its intentions to strengthen the bonds between the charity and governing spheres once in power.
The goal of a multicultural Britain, vaunted by both major parties, has shown itself to be increasingly susceptible to the damaging spiral of client-patron politics. McKenzie puts it best:
“Labour now has a unique opportunity to act on these positive ideas, to replenish faith among many of its loyal black voter base that their support at the ballot box will be rewarded.”
The Sewell Report, and its conclusions that claims of systemic racism in Britain are without evidence, are meaningless in the face of the multi-billion-pound Diversity industry. Just as groups like the Runnymede Trust rejected the findings, so too will Labour – it is much more convenient for the party to ignore reality and instead indulge misconceptions held by valuable minority voting blocs.
The happy façade of a post-racial Britain will collapse soon after the Conservative Party is voted out of office. This Race Equality Bill is predicated on the spectre of institutional racism across society, regardless of whether or not this is true.
Conservative politicians will realise too late that winning the moral argument against wokeism is entirely pointless unless you are willing to wield every possible power afforded to you to rip out these insidious anti-British values at the root. This is not a debate, but the cynical wielding of state power for electoral ends, cheered on by an increasingly unaccountable third sector.
The failure to dismantle the Equality Act, over 13 years in office, injured the Conservatives. Labour’s new Race Equality plan might well be fatal.
Poppy Coburn is a journalist.
Do you remember being taught about so-called British values in school? I certainly do. PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education) lessons attempted to mould young Brits into upstanding citizens.
My post-Equality Act educational conditioning was certainly memorable, if only for the “five fingers of British values” class. Said values included: individual liberty, mutual respect, tolerance of different cultures – naturally, the middle finger – rule of law, and democracy.
I think it’s probably time for this Cameronite relic to be updated for the next Labour government, to better reflect the direction our country is travelling in; perhaps it would be wise to swap out liberty for ethno-narcissism.
The Guardian has reported that Labour “hopes to ensure black-led firms access lucrative government contracts” as part of their broader legislative push under the Racial Equality Bill, first mentioned by Marsha de Corvoda, the then-women-and-equalities-minister, in October 2020.
The proposal, which would give more “support” to “African heritage firms” to procure government contracts, is reminiscent of a similar scheme trialled in South Africa. Black Economic Empowerment is generally considered to have been a disastrous failure that crippled the ability to provide effective services, but helped the ANC consolidate its power by bribing black elites.
Parsing through the drip-feed of information around the Race Equality Bill is of vital importance for those of us who are apprehensive about the return of Labour to power.
The party has generally kept their cards close to their chest regarding the content of the Act, likely due to Starmer’s pragmatism; while party activists gnash their teeth at the supposed softening of Labour’s social programme, his team has directed their attention to obfuscating their message while quietly assuring key stakeholders that the content remains radical.
Jacqueline McKenzie, a prominent open-borders activist, and immigration lawyer, is one such stakeholder. She’s a member of the Race Equality Act consulting board, and has begun to speak to favourable press outlets about what the BAME community can expect from it.
McKenzie, typically of her industry, and holds quite radical views: she recently spoke on behalf of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) at an event entitled No More Detention Centres.
BID states on their annual return document that they worked with a 24-year-old Afghan client (their word) who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child, who they helped to get bailed out of prison. She’s unabashedly partisan, railing against the Conservative government and the “hostile environment” pursued by the Home Office.
McKensie is quoted extensively in a piece by the Voice. Some of the policy goals floated include ending deportations for illegal migrants who have lived in Britain since childhood, tackling school exclusion rates, the aforementioned BEE for Britain, and mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.
McKenzie, quoted in the piece, said that Labour wishes to build upon the legacy of the 2019 Race and Faith mini-manifesto authored by Dawn Butler, then shadow minister for women and equalities. The Laurence report, which was used as the impetus for Labour announcing the act, is also mentioned.
Labour has always been at the forefront of anti-discrimination legislation, being the party that brought us the Race Relations Act 1965 and the Equality Act 2010. But it seems rather pointless to introduce more primary legislation to push through what seems rather milquetoast reforms.
Ethnicity pay gap reporting, for example, is already supported by both the CBI and Theresa May, and could easily be facilitated within the framework of the Equality Act. We already have a degree of so-called positive action supported by section 159 of the Act, which allows an employer to take a protected characteristic into consideration when deciding who to recruit or to promote in a tie-break situation.
For example, a police service that employs a disproportionately low number of people from an ethnic minority background may give preferential treatment to a candidate from that background – a reading of the law that has provided much fodder for tabloids outraged at public sector reverse discrimination.
Labour may not run Westminster yet, but they do run the Senedd; Mark Drakeford launched a consultation into creating an “anti-racist Wales by 2030” after the death of George Floyd, around the same time the British Labour party began dropping hints about a Race Equality Bill.
Their plan, which was worked upon by dozens of ‘stakeholder’ groups like the Runnymede Trust, includes action that exceeds the already-controversial meddling of the Equality Act: ensuring that hate crimes will “no longer occur”, ensuring “white leaders” are “not resentful” of BAME talent, and ensuring that BAME people no longer “carry the emotional toil that triggers us daily”.
These proposals are unachievable by design. It is not so much the substance of the new Race Equality Bill that we should focus on, but rather the spirit in which it has been adopted.
As we can see from the above example, the new legislation will be divorced entirely from reality. Each and every issue raised in these reports and party-friendly journalism have been championed by charity-sector lobbyists keen to promote the fiction that Britain is a systemically racist country.
The third sector has traditionally played a central role in pushing through equalities legislation, and the Labour party has made no secret about its intentions to strengthen the bonds between the charity and governing spheres once in power.
The goal of a multicultural Britain, vaunted by both major parties, has shown itself to be increasingly susceptible to the damaging spiral of client-patron politics. McKenzie puts it best:
“Labour now has a unique opportunity to act on these positive ideas, to replenish faith among many of its loyal black voter base that their support at the ballot box will be rewarded.”
The Sewell Report, and its conclusions that claims of systemic racism in Britain are without evidence, are meaningless in the face of the multi-billion-pound Diversity industry. Just as groups like the Runnymede Trust rejected the findings, so too will Labour – it is much more convenient for the party to ignore reality and instead indulge misconceptions held by valuable minority voting blocs.
The happy façade of a post-racial Britain will collapse soon after the Conservative Party is voted out of office. This Race Equality Bill is predicated on the spectre of institutional racism across society, regardless of whether or not this is true.
Conservative politicians will realise too late that winning the moral argument against wokeism is entirely pointless unless you are willing to wield every possible power afforded to you to rip out these insidious anti-British values at the root. This is not a debate, but the cynical wielding of state power for electoral ends, cheered on by an increasingly unaccountable third sector.
The failure to dismantle the Equality Act, over 13 years in office, injured the Conservatives. Labour’s new Race Equality plan might well be fatal.