Kemi Badenoch’s call to scrap equalities guidelines for police and other public bodies has opened up a new front in the culture wars amid tensions over the death of Henry Nowak and riots in Belfast sparked by a knife attack by a Sudanese asylum seeker.
The Tory leader said the landmark Equality Act 2010 does offer a valuable “shield” against discrimination. But the Public Sector Equality Duty, which places an active requirement on public bodies to demonstrate the promotion of equality, had become a legal “minefield”, she said. It should be repealed “in its entirety”.
What did the commentators say?
Comparisons have been made between Henry Nowak and George Floyd, “but a more accurate precedent” for the murder of 18-year-old student Nowak would be the case of Stephen Lawrence”, said Andrew Doyle, the author of “Free Speech and Why It Matters”, in The Washington Post. That “horrific crime led to a much-needed overhaul of police practice” characterised by institutional racism.
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Today, UK policing suffers from a “different form of institutional bias, which prioritises group identity and the tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion over impartial and rigorous law enforcement”. Nowak’s death “should lead to a similarly urgent reappraisal”.
By “incubating” diversity, equality and inclusion guidelines in the public sector, Labour and the Conservatives have “presented Reform UK with an open goal”, said The Times. With the Makerfield by-election a fortnight away, Nigel Farage has “weaponised the Nowak case”, alleging institutional “anti-white prejudice” and a “two-tier” justice system, giving fresh impetus to Reform’s calls to scrap the Equality Act entirely.
Keir Starmer is “right” to claim that Farage is “playing politics with a tragedy” but the PM “downplays genuine concerns about politicised policing”. In this febrile political atmosphere, it is Badenoch’s “common sense” approach that “emerges from this debate with most credit”, said The Times.
Badenoch’s response “should be commended for its sensible and responsible tone”, said The Independent. While suggesting improvements to the Equality Act, her speech “was in effect a strong defence of the principles behind it” and has Farage’s “simplistic slogans on the run”.
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Given the recent “attacks on transgender rights” in the UK, “it is perhaps not surprising that the equalities consensus is all but dead now even with race”, said David Maddox in The Independent. Farage’s colourful rhetoric wins headlines but he remains a “policy vacuum”, so Badenoch has “spied her opportunity” to take the lead in “a policy arms race on the right of politics to own the culture wars agenda”.
What next?
Badenoch’s intervention has turned the “once uncontroversial” public sector equality duty into the “new battleground in Britain’s culture wars”, said Aamna Mohdin in The Guardian. She linked equality guidelines to the Bank of England’s decision to replace historical figures on banknotes with images of British wildlife.
But experts in equality law say many of the examples cited by critics “misunderstand its purpose and how it operates in practice”. They stress that the duty “does not require public organisations to provide a particular service or introduce a particular policy”.
Human rights barrister Karon Monaghan said the attack on equality guidelines in the public sector fuelled the right-wing attack on anti-discrimination provisions more broadly, including the Equality Act. “Do we want a society where women can be paid unequally, where black people can be told they can’t have a job, where disabled people can’t get into work?” she said.
With Farage and now the Tories expected to make scrapping “woke” equality rules a major part of their campaign at the next general election, “we may get our answer” then, said Mohdin.
