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Boris Johnson should force an Equality Minister to apologize or fire her, the former head of the Downing Street race unit has urged, amid a deepening dispute over “division politics.”
Simon Woolley said the prime minister should intervene in the Kemi Badenoch dispute, after a leaked letter from a 10th adviser suggested she may have broken the ministerial code when she publicly criticized a journalist on social media.
Special adviser Samuel Kasumu also complained about the unbearable tension in Downing Street over race and said he considered resigning out of fear that the Conservatives were pursuing a “policy of division.”
Following frenzied interventions by high-level ministers and advisers, including Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi, Kasumu retracted his resignation on Thursday night.
Lord Woolley, who was chair of the racial disparity unit in Whitehall until July, said the government must respond to Kasumu’s concerns that Badenoch may have broken ministerial rules when he publicly criticized Nadine White, a HuffPost journalist.
Woolley told The Guardian: “I hope Samuel’s courage in saying this elicits a real leadership response. Unless Kemi Badenoch offers a full apology to Nadine White, her position seems untenable. “
Rather than respond to a journalistic investigation, in which White asked by email why Badenoch had not appeared in a video featuring other black party MPs encouraging adoption of the Covid-19 vaccine, the minister sparked a protest by accusing the journalist on Twitter of “Sowing distrust” and “making claims.”
Woolley, who is also leading Operation Black Vote, said the prime minister must act decisively to regain the trust of the Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority (BAME) communities and anti-racism activists.
“This is a critical moment for the government,” he said. “A key black special adviser at 10 Downing Street is deeply concerned about the politics of division. Samuel Kasumu refers to the government’s strategy that pits poor whites against poor blacks, for example, ruling out Black Lives Matter and arguing that class in the northern regions, a code for the white working class, is an inequality. greater than racism.
“What Kasumu and others want is for the government to take a radical turn and begin to radically recognize and grapple with the deep-seated racial inequalities that have been exposed by Covid-19, such as jobs, healthcare and housing.”
Women and Equality Minister Liz Truss delivered a speech in December detailing how she would shift the focus from the “trendy” issues of race and gender and toward economic inequalities.
Kasumu, a businessman who has served as a political appointee for the government since being drafted into Prime Minister Theresa May, offered his resignation to Johnson on Thursday morning.
The behavior of Badenoch, who used Twitter to post emails from the HuffPost reporter, calling them “creepy and weird,” had been concerning, Kasumu wrote. In his resignation letter, Kasumu wrote that “more worrying than the act, was the lack of internal response.”
“It wasn’t right or justifiable, but somehow nothing was said. I waited, and waited, for something from the senior leadership team that even aimed to an expected standard, but it didn’t materialize. “
Badenoch has previously sparked controversy by saying it was illegal for schools to teach white privilege as an indisputable fact and by accusing the family of a 12-year-old boy arrested for a toy gun for “inflaming tensions” over behavior. police.
No 10 initially defended Badenoch for his response to HuffPost, but the BBC reported that it was now understood that the Cabinet Office was investigating whether he had violated the ministerial code.
On Friday afternoon, the prime minister’s spokesman denied that claim, saying: “There is no ongoing investigation by the Cabinet Office. The Prime Minister fully supports the important work that the Minister is doing to improve the acceptance of the vaccine among ethnic minority communities. “
Kasumu said the progress made by conservatives under David Cameron in 2015 in appealing to ethnic minority voters had been reversed. “I fear for what may happen to the party in the future by opting for a policy fraught with division,” he wrote, adding: “The damage that is often caused by our actions is not considered much.”
Tensions are understood to have been building at number 10 since Munira Mirza was asked in June to appoint members of the new government commission on racial inequalities. Mirza, a key Johnson adviser, has previously questioned the existence of institutional racism and condemned previous investigations to foster a “culture of grievance.”
Commission chairman Tony Sewell has questioned the idea of institutional racism in the past. He was forced to apologize in July for making homophobic comments after former footballer Justin Fashanu revealed he was gay in 1990.
A Downing Street spokesperson said of Kasumu: “It would not be appropriate to comment on individual staff members. This government is committed to the inclusion and unity of communities, and it is the most ethnically diverse in the history of this country. Last year we established a commission on racial and ethnic disparities to examine and address inequality and discrimination wherever it is found. You must report shortly. “
