Britain’s future race relations are in bad shape

It must have seemed a smart strategy. Hand-pick “independent” commissioners whose views on racism are mostly known to be aligned with the prevailing orthodoxy in 10 Downing Street; ask them to produce a report after the prime minister has dropped a heavy hint and declared he wants to “change the narrative” on race; then spin the report by selectively leaking the most helpful passages to the most helpful journalists (which somehow did not include The Independent’s race correspondent, Nadine White). 

Things, it is fair to say, do not seem to have gone to plan. So far from “changing the narrative” and closing down an inconvenient debate about institutional racism, Downing Street’s news management has merely made the commission’s report even less credible. So absurd were some of the commission’s ruminations, such as a plea to try to look at positive aspects of slavery, that it made itself look ridiculous. In explaining away almost all of the racism that people of colour encounter as merely to do with class, geography and “family structure”, and thus virtually declaring racism extinct in Britain, it was a risible exercise in gaslighting.

The notion that Britain is a “model” nation may be well-meaning – it is perfectly true that race relations are far better than they were in the days when landlords could pin up signs saying “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” , and no doubt there is worse racism in other places – but for a country with so many statues to colonial conquerors and slave owners, it is pushing things a bit. 

Did it all get too much for Boris Johnson’s adviser on ethnic minorities, Samuel Kasumu? Downing Street denied that his resignation was linked to the commission’s complacent report. That may be true, in the narrowest sense. Mr Kasumu, working as closely as he did with Mr Johnson and his policy chief, Munira Mirza, would have had a shrewder idea than most about the heat coming down the line, and could have quit earlier; except, of course, that he did tender his resignation in February, before he was persuaded to relent – temporarily, as it turns out.

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When he first “resigned”, the reasons were published, and they included his evident horror at the way the government was pursuing “politics steeped in division”. That first attempted escape was made because Mr Kasumu was so disturbed at the way the minister for equalities, Kemi Badenoch, had publicly attacked Ms White on Twitter simply for asking a question about getting the message about vaccinations across to ethnically diverse communities. Mr Kasumu told Mr Johnson about his unhappiness about Ms Badenoch’s behaviour towards Ms White in his resignation letter, and it is worth quoting, because Downing Street is acting as though his departure is a complete surprise.

“It was not OK or justifiable, but somehow nothing was said ... I waited, and waited, for something from the senior leadership team to even point to an expected standard, but it did not materialise,” Mr Kasumu wrote.

He also wrote: “The damage that is often caused by our actions is not much considered. As someone that has spent his whole adult life serving others, that tension has been at times unbearable.”

Mr Kasumu, for one, was not prepared to be a soldier in the Conservative Party’s relentless, cynical and deeply dangerous culture wars. Insofar as the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was another weapon in the “politics steeped in division”, therefore, Mr Kasumu’s departure was indirectly linked to the publication of the commission’s report. It was at the very least unfortunate timing. Even a man of Mr Johnson’s chutzpah could not try to present it as a vote of confidence by Mr Kasumu.

Another Johnsonian shambles, then, of a kind we’ve become wearily familiar with. The commission has been mocked, and rightly so. The “narrative” on race remains stubbornly unchanged, and rooted in reality. Mr Johnson has been humiliated by the resignation of his adviser on ethnic minorities. The worst of it is that he doesn’t seem to care that much. It does not augur well for the future of race relations in Britain.