Markus Andrews

It doesn’t take much to panic us at the moment. US Strategic Command – the body responsible for the nuclear weapons – sparked fear and confusion by posting gibberish on Twitter. A meltdown? A major hack? No. The social media manager left his child at the computer and the tiny imposter temporarily took over the account. David Cameron may be starting to seriously panic, as the Westminster lobbying scandal threatens to turn nuclear. Labour has shared his financier friend’s old business card – showing that the (alleged) imposter claimed to have worked at No 10. Meanwhile, panicking EU leaders have turned to Putin for help – desperately hoping the Russian vaccine doesn’t turn out to be an imposter.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside the bubblePolitical commentator Andrew Grice on what to look out for today: More

Britain is no longer a country where the “system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”, according to the “insulting” and “divisive” report by the Race Commission, appointed by the government in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.Months overdue, and 258 pages long, the report’s findings and 24 recommendations feature some staggering assertions – and a lot of glaring omissions. The body, headed by prime minister Boris Johnson’s friend and former charity boss Dr Tony Sewell, argued that geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion all impact life chances more than racism. Evidence of institutional racism, it says, was not found. The commission was established by Munira Mirza, a No 10 adviser who has previously expressed doubts over the existence of institutional racism. Dr Sewell has said the same. And sponsoring minister, Kemi Badenoch, has made similar remarks, denying “systemic injustice” has an impact on Covid death rates, and saying it should be illegal to teach the concept of white privilege in schools. All of this has been carried out at the behest of the PM, whose history of racist remarks has been well documented.There have been concerns about other members of the board and their politics, which seem to be invariably aligned with Conservative values. Hence some have questioned the extent to which this purported independent commission is in fact independent.Indeed, shortly after the commission panel was announced last summer, I spoke with Lord Simon Woolley who described them as a “motley crew of deniers” on the “profound nature of systemic racism” which, he added, has been brutally exposed by Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter. Now that the report has finally been published – after an extraordinary four-month delay – it is clear that the commission has cherry picked data to suit its narrative, one which gaslights ethnic minority communities by suggesting institutional racism is a mere figment of their imaginations. It offers an incomplete picture of what drives inequalities and disparity in outcomes across the UK, and misses vital parts of the puzzle. AccountabilityThroughout the 258-page report, the commission notes that the Black Lives Matter protests last year saw many young people in Britain calling for change.It further states that while it understands the “idealism” of these “well-intentioned” young people who have protested for racial equality, it questions whether a narrative claiming that nothing has improved “will achieve anything beyond alienating the decent centre ground”.Activists, particularly those with experience of campaigning, have seldom claimed that nothing at all has changed. But more needs to change to achieve a society that’s fair – including the dismantling of institutional racism. By denying its existence, the government avoids accountability for the ills which continue to plague the lives of marginalised groups. This is further demonstrated through the commission’s call for more research into why “some ethnic minority groups are doing better than others” and whether this is due to differences in family structures, social networks or health behaviours such as alcohol and smoking. The report notes improvements such as increasing diversity in elite professions which have often been measured by the same “Bame” label which the commission is now lobbying to get rid of – partly due to the unreliable data it yields, insofar as not knowing how each ethnic minority group fares within that bracket.By clear contrast, current statistics paint a grim picture of the reality: Black mothers are four times more likely to die during childbirth, in which racism has been cited as a factor. Institutional racism was also found to have been a factor in the Windrush Scandal, which is very much ongoing, and Black men are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police.Perhaps the clearest omission in the report is the dismissal of people’s real, everyday and often painful lived experiences. Over the years, numerous reports have been produced which have cited and evidenced the existence of institutional racism and structural inequalities in British society such as The Lawrence Review (2020) and The Windrush Lessons Learned Review (2020), beyond the sporadic instances of racist trolling online as cited by Sewell in this new report. Anecdotally, virtually everyone from within ethnic minority communities has spoken of very real lived experiences of grappling with the same sort of ingrained discrimination – and yet this report does not acknowledge this.So why then, did the commission very quietly ask for evidence from the public to “better understand why racial disparities thrive in Britain”, rather than launching an open invitation far and wide?This failure to seek and search for evidence from all corners of the country, to interrogate fully these tragically widespread experiences of racism, smacks of a wilful reluctance of the report authors to open their eyes to evidence they did not want to see. More

During his last months as leader of the opposition, after the MPs’ expenses scandal, David Cameron famously predicted that the next great scandal waiting to happen was in lobbying. Sure enough, three Labour ex-ministers were “stung” shortly afterwards by a newspaper, caught trying to peddle access during the dying months of Gordon Brown’s government. One, Stephen Byers, was unfortunate enough to have compared himself to a “taxi for hire”. At the time, Cameron reflected on the sorry state of affairs: “I think what it shows is a party that has been in power for far too long and has lost touch with what it’s meant to be doing.” That has quite the echo now.The conundrum at the centre of what we may now call the Cameron-Greensill affair is that, at least since Cameron left office, the only reason why Lex Greensill would find a clapped-out politician like the former prime minister useful is because of his connections. “Useful”, that is, to the extent that Cameron might once have been in line for share options in Greensill Capital worth about £50m. Even to a man as wealthy as him, that would qualify as “real money”. For his part, Cameron, a man of intelligence and much political and diplomatic experience, had to offer his wise advice and, it turns out, his knowledge of the chancellor of the exchequer’s phone number, to which texts were dutifully delivered. There is nothing wrong with anyone wanting to make some cash, and no one has suggested any wrongdoing, but it is best to see the Cameron-Greensill relationship for what it was – a commercial, if not mercenary, one. More

Britain is no longer a country where the “system is deliberately rigged” against ethnic minorities a landmark race review has concluded – prompting accusations of complacency over progress towards an anti-racist society.Criticising the the use of the term “institutional racism” as being “too liberally used”, the 258-page report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities suggested that factors such a socio-economic background, culture and religion have a “more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism”.In his foreword, commission chair Dr Tony Sewell wrote: “Put simply we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”.“The impediments and disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism. Too often ‘racism’ is the catch-all explanation, and can be simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined”.However, the authors said that “outright racism still exists”, the UK was not a “post-racial society”, and stressed: “We take the reality of racism seriously and we do not deny that it is a real force in the UK”.Read more:The report was commissioned by Boris Johnson last summer in response to the Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the globe highlighting endemic racism and injustice after the death of the George Floyd in the US.In a statement, the prime minister suggested the commission had “set out a positive agenda for change” and said the government will “consider their recommendations in detail, and assess the implications for future government policy”.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe report – carried out amid the coronavirus pandemic – highlights that some ethnic minorities have faced a disproportionate impact from the disease, but when examining the health of overall population “is it also evident there is more than one story to tell”.“Life expectancy or overall mortality, shows that ethnic minorities do better overall than the white population and actually have better outcomes for many of the 25 leading causes of death,” the authors added.In its 24 recommendations, the report calls for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to receive additional funding from government to challenge policies or practices that “cause significant and unjust racial disadvantage”.In a section on the curriculum in schools it also called for a teaching resource that examines the influence of the UK – particularly during the era of empire – to teach how Britishness influenced the Commonwealth countries and vice-versa.However, it added: “There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain”.Labour’s shadow equalities minister Marsha De Cordova hit back, saying: “The government must urgently explain how they came to publish content which glorifies the slave trade and immediately disassociate themselves with these remarks.”Among other recommendations, the report also urges for:the creation of an independent office for health disparitiesan extended school day prioritising disadvantaged areasfurther action to challenge racist and discriminatory actions onlineending the use of ‘unhelpful’ acronyms such as BameHowever, following the publication of the report, opposition politicians, race equality campaigners and unions criticised its central conclusions as insulting while “gas lighting” ethnic minorities in Britain.David Lammy, who led a review into racial disparities in the criminal justice system in 2017, described the report as an “insult to anybody and everybody across this county who experiences institutional racism”.His Labour frontbench colleague Ms de Cordova added: “This report was an opportunity to seriously engage with the reality of inequality and institutional racism in the UK. Instead we have a divisive polemic which cherry picks statistics. To downplay institutional racism in a pandemic where black, asian and ethnic minority people have died disproportionately and are now twice as likely to be unemployed is an insult.”Dr Halima Begum, the chief executive of the race equality think-tank Runnymede Trust,questioned the suitability of the chairman Dr Sewell and head of the Number 10 policy unit Munira Mirza, who had a role in setting the commission up – both of whom have previously questioned the existence of institutional racism.No evidence of institutional racism, says head of race report“If both these individuals are from the outset denying the existence of institutional racism, then what hope did we have that they were going to look into this in an objective manner, if not follow whatever the Government mantra is?” she said.The GMB union national secretary for public services, Rehana Azam, claimed: “Only this government could produce a report on race in the 21st century that actually gaslights black, asian and minority ethnic communities.Describing the report as “deeply cynical”, she went on: “Institutional racism exists, it’s the lived experience of millions of black and ethnic minority workers. “We’re paid less, we’re more likely to be in high-risk jobs during the pandemic, we’re more likely to die from covid, we’re more likely to be stopped and searched, to be arrested and to go to prison. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), said: “We hoped that the commission would recommend action to stamp out insecure work and make employers act to close their ethnicity gaps.“Instead, the commission has chosen to deny the experiences of black and minority ethnic workers and be complacent about the UK’s progress towards being an anti-racist society.”The general secretary of the teachers’ union (NASUWT) Dr Patrick Roach said that structural racism “continues to blight and scar our community and our economy, holding back our communities and undermining life chances”.“Black communities have been systematically failed by a government response that was supposed to protect us all during the pandemic, the refusal to publish evidence of their race equality impact assessments and by a government commission that has failed to grasp the realities. The evidence of racism in Britain today is there for all to see.” More

Today’s daily politics briefingThe shadow justice secretary David Lammy has branded the government’s race report an “insult”, with campaigners condemning its suggestion that Britain is not an institutionally racist country. The Labour MP accused Boris Johnson of ignoring the wishes of British people who “are dying to turn the page on racism”.“Boris Johnson has just slammed the door in their faces by telling them that they’re idealists, they are wasting their time. He has let an entire generation of young white and black British people down,” he added. Shadow equalities minister Marsha De Cordova also hit out at the report, saying the government must explain why a passage “which glorifies the slave trade” was published. Commissioned in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests last year, the report, which was published on Wednesday, says the UK has become a “more open society”.While admitting that racism persists, its sees the UK “as a model for other white-majority countries” regarding race equality in education and the workplace.Halima Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, a leading race equality think-tank, is among those who disagree with the commission’s conclusions. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“Institutionally, we are still racist, and for a government-appointed commission to look into (institutional) racism, to deny its existence is deeply, deeply worrying,” she said. Show latest update

1617202239Report condemned as ‘divisive polemic’ As mentioned earlier, the shadow equalities secretary Marsha de Codova has lambasted the race report, calling it a “divisive polemic”. Nadine White and Ashley Cowburn have a round-up of this and other reactions: Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 15:501617201058Government must not use report as excuse for ‘shameful inaction’, say Lib Dems The Liberal Democrats have urged the government not to hide behind the report, encouraging it to tackle racial injustice instead. Wera Hobhouse, the party’s equalities spokesperson, said many peoples lives in the UK are “blighted by discrimination, inequality and injustice” but that the government is guilty of “shameful inaction” on the issue. To address this, she called on ministers to develop a “proper race equality strategy”. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 15:301617199850Tony Blair’s ‘uncritical embrace’ of globalisation damaged UK communities, says Nandy Tony Blair’s approach to globalisation and capitalism cost Labour votes and damaged communities, a top member of Keir Starmer’s team has said.In a speech on Wednesday shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said places like her constituency of Wigan had been “stripped of their vitality, their purpose, their inheritance” by free markets.And she promised a new approach from Labour that would include “a rejection of the uncritical embrace of economic globalisation” and protect workers from unfair competition abroad.Jon Stone 31 March 2021 15:101617198650Government must acknowledge existence of systemic racism, says teaching union boss The general secretary of the UK’s largest teaching union has hit out at the race report, saying that “structural racism continues to blight and scar our country and our economy”. Dr Patrick Roach said that black communities “have been systematically failed” by the government and that “racism is real and it is systemic”. “Unless and until the government accepts the facts of systemic racism, it will continue to fail Black workers and communities, and further deepen the scar of racial injustice in our country,” he added. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 14:501617197637Race review ‘glorifies slave trade’, says shadow equalities secretaryShadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova has called the race report a “divisive polemic” which ignores the reality of institutional racism and “cherry-picks statistics”. The Labour MP called the review an “insult” to black, Asian and ethnic minority people, groups which have been disproportionatelty affected by the pandemic.Ms de Cordova also said government “must disassociate themselves” from one passage in the report, which she alleged “glorifies the slave trade”. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 14:331617196550Race report: The key findings Shaun Lintern and Tom Batchelor take a look at the race report’s key findings, including its recommendations on education, health and policing. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 14:151617195624Independent Scotland could wait 10 years to join EU, warns think-tank An independent Scotland would have to wait up to 10 years to join the EU, a think-tank has warned. In a new report, the non-partisan Institute for Government (IfG) said a hard border with England would be inevitable if Scotland joined the bloc.It added that the country would also most likely have to adopt the Euro.Bearing these matters in mind, the report’s authors said the Scottish government should be“open” about the “costs as well as benefits” of EU membership. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 14:001617194400Scottish party leaders clash over independence Scottish party leaders clashed over the possibility of a second independence referendum in a heated debate on Tuesday evening. Ahead of elections in May, Nicola Sturgeon, the country’s first minister, promised she would be an “experienced hand at the wheel” if elected and her SNP party would introduce “bold policies to drive our recovery”.She added that people should have the choice of independence once the pandemic is over.While the Scottish Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties disapproved of this, the Scottish Green Party expressed support for a referendum during the next parliament. Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 13:401617193857Who are the authors of the government’s race report? The race report published today has already sparked much public debate. But who wrote it? Adam Forrest has the details: Liam James31 March 2021 13:301617193850Ministers must not use report as excuse for ‘shameful inaction’, say Lib Dems The Liberal Democrats have said that the government should not hide behind the report, treating it as an excuse for its “shameful inaction” on racial injustice. Wera Hobhouse, the party’s equalities spokesperson, said people’s lives in the UK and overseas are “blighted by discrimination, inequality and injustice”. As a result, she demanded that Downing Street develop a “proper race equality strategy”.Rory Sullivan31 March 2021 13:30 More

Race equality campaigners have dismissed claims in a landmark report that the UK is not an institutionally racist country, saying they are “deeply, massively let down” by one of its central conclusions.It comes after the government released a summary of the highly anticipated Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities – commissioned by No 10 in response to the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the globe last summer highlighting racism and injustice.The full 264-page report was later published on Wednesday, and says the UK has become a “more open society” where children from many ethnic communities perform as well, or substantially better, than white pupils in compulsory education.“The landmark report challenges the view that Britain has failed to make progress in tackling racial inequality, suggesting the well-meaning ‘idealism’ of many young people who claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence,” the summary claims.Race advisers did conclude, however, that the UK is not “a post-racial society” and that “overt and outright racism persists”, particularly online.Read more:Dr Halima Begum, the chief executive of the race equality think-tank Runnymede Trust, said she felt “deeply, massively let down” by the Commissions on Race and Ethnic Disparities’ report.Pressed on the claim that Britain is not institutionally racist, Dr Begum replied: “Tell that to the black young mother who is four times more likely to die in childbirth than her young white neighbour, tell that to 60 per cent of NHS doctors and nurses who died from Covid and were black and ethnic minority workers. You can’t tell them, because they are dead.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“Institutionally, we are still racist, and for a government-appointed commission to look into [institutional] racism, to deny its existence is deeply, deeply worrying.”She also questioned the suitability of the chairman Dr Tony Sewell and head of the Number 10 policy unit Munira Mirza, who had a role in setting the commission up — both of whom have previously questioned the existence of institutional racism.“If both these individuals are from the outset denying the existence of institutional racism, then what hope did we have that they were going to look into this in an objective manner, if not follow whatever the government mantra is?” she said.Patrick Vernon OBE, a prominent equalities campaigner, told The Independent that the report reminded him of the ones conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, which, he said, suggested that “immigrant children can survive the colour bar of their parents if they work and be grateful that they are British”.“The report, instead of being forward thinking and adding a new debate on race, is actually stuck in a time warp, not facing the true realities of 2021,” he said.“We are in the middle of global pandemic of Covid -19 and anti -blackness (Afriphobia) which has exposed current inequalities and structural racism in society which we have known for decades from previous independent commissioned reports ranging lack of equality in the boardroom, deaths in custody, impact of hostile environment on Windrush Generation and racism in the criminal justice system.”David Lammy, who led a review into racial disparities in the criminal justice system in 2017, said the report was an “insult to anybody and everybody across this country who experiences institutional racism”.He claimed: “Boris Johnson has just slammed the door in their faces by telling them that they’re idealists, they are wasting their time. He has let an entire generation of young white and black British people down.“This report could have been a turning point and a moment to come together. Instead, it has chosen to divide us once more and keep us debating the existence of racism rather than doing anything about it.”Responding to a passage in the final report which argues we need to tell a “new story” about the slave trade which highlights cultural transformation of African people, shadow equalities minister Marsha De Cordova said: “The government must urgently explain how they came to publish content which glorifies the slave trade and immediately disassociate themselves with these remarks.”Sunder Katwala, Director of British Future, said: “Black and Asian Britons in our society today face less prejudice than their parents or grandparents; they may well fare better than those in many other countries. But such comparisons make little difference to the lives of ethnic minority Britons in 2021.“There’s an important success story in education that can rightly be celebrated. But if a graduate in Manchester with an ethnic-sounding surname still gets fewer job interviews than a white classmate with the same CV, why should they feel lucky that the odds might be worse in Milan or Marseille?“Britain probably does put more energy than others into collecting data on race. That shouldn’t only be used to highlight the progress that undoubtedly has been made – it must also identify the gaps so we can take action to address them.”Speaking ahead of the report being publicly released, Dr Sewell stressed that no one was saying racism doesn’t exist in Britain, but added: “Evidence of actual institutional racism? No, that wasn’t there, we didn’t find that.”Mr Sewell also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the term “institutional racism” was “sometimes wrongly applied” as a “sort of catch-all phrase for microaggressions or acts of racial abuse”.Pressed on what he believed was wrong with the phrase, Mr Sewell went on: “People declare themselves institutionally racist, so for example, we’ve heard recently of the education system declaring itself institutionally racist when if you look at the evidence behind that it’s not the case.“We have found the complete opposite in terms of educational outcomes of ethnic minorities. You can’t just go ahead and willy-nilly declare yourself institutionally racist like that.” More

Tony Blair’s approach to globalisation and capitalism cost Labour votes and damaged communities, a top member of Keir Starmer’s team has said.In a speech on Wednesday shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said places like her constituency of Wigan had been “stripped of their vitality, their purpose, their inheritance” by free markets.And she promised a new approach from Labour that would include “a rejection of the uncritical embrace of economic globalisation” and protect workers from unfair competition abroad.Taking aim at seats won by the Tories at the 2019 election, the shadow foreign secretary said people in towns like Darlington or Stockton were being outcompeted by workers in China earning a pittance.And she accused the government of ignoring these problems and instead using them as a political weapon to attack Labour. Read more:Ms Nandy said the Tory governments of the 1980s had “handed so much power to capital that by the late 90s it had convinced the Labour government that this model of globalisation was not a choice but a fate”.Quoting directly from a landmark 2001 speech by Tony Blair, she said: “It ushered in an era of flexible labour markets and deregulation ‘to untie the hands of business’ as the then Prime Minister described it in his Chicago speech. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday”In a sink or swim world, those who were not ‘swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change’ found themselves on the wrong side of history.”And this is how places like … Wigan in Lancashire, known globally for Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier, came to be stripped of their vitality, their purpose, their inheritance – seen no longer as contributors, but as the problem itself.”Their wages too high, their demands too many. So the work was transferred to countries where this ‘problem’ was removed and the dignity of labour became a private not political concern with questions of ethics handed to the market to decide.”Less than two decades later on both sides of the Atlantic, the people in those places delivered their verdict on that approach.”Turning her fire on the Tories, the shadow foreign secretary said: “Instead of healing these wounds the Government has sought to weaponise them, based on an imagined idea of working-class communities that is utterly at odds with the views and aspirations of those who live in them,” she said.”And in the end I think this is the fatal flaw in the Government’s approach. At heart I think they believe that foreign policy has absolutely nothing to do with people in Darlington or Selcoats. “But our relationship with China is more central to the factory operative earning £8.72 an hour in Stockton than any high street grant. And for all the faux flag waving there is no patriotic vision for those people or places.”Instead of good jobs and fair trade we get wave machines to deter asylum seekers, pork barrel grant schemes handed out to high streets by politicians who never leave Whitehall, and ministers who wrap themselves in flags and berate the BBC for failing to sufficiently do the same.”Speaking in at question and answer session after the speech, Ms Nandy added: “Internationalism is in our DNA in the Labour Party, the test is whether it’s working for people here as well.”Ms Nandy also used the speech to set out how patriotism would help the UK “rediscover a confident, outward-looking approach to the world” and to state that “for too long, foreign policy has been the preserve of the political classes”.“The world beyond our shores, and our ability to mould and shape it, affects the lives of people at home to an extraordinary degree,” Nandy said. “The challenges we face today demand more than empty slogans.” More

Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of trying to downplay structural racism in the UK, after its review concluded that claims the country is institutionally racist are “not borne out by the evidence”.The commission on race and ethnic disparities – set up by the prime minister in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests – has found the UK acts as “a model” for other white-majority countries when it comes to racial equality in education and the workplace.Labour’s Lisa Nandy said she was “deeply disappointed” that the race report “seems to downplay the structural problems we’ve got in this country”.Halima Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, a leading race equality think-tank, said that denying the existence of institutional racism was “deeply, deeply worrying”.So who exactly came up with the commission’s conclusions? The Independent took a closer look at those behind the government’s controversial report.Read more:Dr Tony SewellThe head of the government-appointed race commission, Dr Tony Sewell, has previously suggested that the evidence for “institutional racism” is “somewhat flimsy”.Mr Sewell, a former teacher who grew up in Brixton, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “No-one denies and no-one is saying racism doesn’t exist. However… evidence of actual institutional racism? No, that wasn’t there, we didn’t find that.”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayLast year Dr Sewell, who currently runs education charity Generating Genius, described the Black Lives Matter demonstrations as a “lower middle-class revolt”, and said protests over statues was a “side-show”.The commission chair also apologised last year for “wrong and offensive” comments he made 30 years ago – in which he referred to gay people as “tortured queens playing hide and seek”.Munira MirzaMunira Mirza, head of the Downing Street policy unit, was tasked with setting up the commission on race and ethnic disparities – and chose Dr Sewell to lead its work.The 43-year-old from Oldham, the daughter of immigrants who arrived from Pakistan, is not actually a member of the Conservative party. Like Dr Sewell, she has previously downplayed the idea of racism as an “institutional problem”. More