Kemi Badenoch

Common sense is a cop-out of a phrase.

That I say common sense and everyone nods and everyone's thinking something entirely different.

So why is she now thinking that this is fertile political ground?

Modern Britain is the least racist country on earth.

I speak from experience.

As a child, I lived on three different continents.

I have seen what life is like for ethnic minorities in other places.

There is nowhere else on earth I'd rather be.

There is nowhere else on earth that I would be doing the job that I'm doing right now as a black woman in a majority white country.

It is because we are not racist, because we care so much about equality, that we have overcorrected and actually brought in rules that are actually discriminatory.

That is Kemi Badenoch saying her party would seek to abolish a duty for teachers.

for nurses, for police officers to consider the equalities law because she thinks fear of being racist means authorities are not stopping tragedies from happening.

Over centuries, we have enshrined in our law our belief that everybody in this country is equal.

There is a reason Lady Justice is blindfolded.

The idea that each person should be treated the same regardless of who they are is a value so deeply ingrained in our culture that most people in Britain accept it as a self-evident truth.

But while we have been going about our business, activists have been taking Lady Justice's blindfold off.

They want the law to treat people differently on the basis of identity groups, eroding a centuries-old principle that has made Britain the amazing country that it is today.

Equality law, properly designed, should protect us all in the same way.

It should be a shield, not a sword.

It should protect people from discrimination.