Is Britain really the least racist country on earth?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Global Player original podcast. Kemi Badenoch is calling for a return to common sense.
Common sense is a cop-out of a phrase. That I say common sense and everyone nods and everyone's thinking something entirely different.
I am absolutely astonished at the number of politicians, including now Kemi Badenoch, who seem absolutely certain about what happened that night with Henry Novak.
What evidence does Kemi Badenoch provide to support her claim about racism in Britain?
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.
How does Kemi Badenoch define 'common sense' in relation to political discourse?
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.
She wants the whole debate on identity politics to change. She believes it's seeped into too many areas of our public life. Is she right? Welcome to The News Agents. The News Agents. It's John. It's Maylis. It's Lewis. And Kemi Badenoch is following up from last week when she was actually widely praised for her response to Henry Novak. But she is choosing to make a bigger argument here in a speech that she's made today. As Emily was saying, she wants to scrap rules that require government bodies such as schools, hospitals, police to consider promoting equality in their decisions. We're taking a step back here. She's in a way doing a sort of halfway house from where Labour and Reform are. Reform want to scrap.
The Equality Act 2010. The Equality Act 2010 has proved a really totemic piece of legislation, which has affected all sorts of things that government does. It was passed at the very basically the last big law that the Labour government actually got on a statute book back in 2010 before that government left office. And the Tories are saying they don't want to scrap it entirely. It protects people with protected characteristics, whether it's sex or sexism. race or sexuality. But they are saying they want to scrap a very important part of it, which is something that sounds dull, but it has been very important, which is the public sector equality duty, the PSED. What does that do? Well, it requires public bodies carrying out public functions to have due regard for
to those characteristics and to advance equality of opportunity between people who share and people who do not share relevant protected characteristics, i.e. they need to think about how they promote equality between people in everything that they do. And Kemi Badenoch's argument is to say that that bit of the legislation basically leads to outcomes, as we've seen with the police, she argues, and Henry Novak, where they are too worried, these organisations, worried about actually advancing equality and looking like they're advancing equality for discriminated groups rather than doing their job. This is a bit more of what she had to say.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:24
2
What evidence does Kemi Badenoch provide to support her claim about racism in Britain?
0:24–0:37
3
How does Kemi Badenoch define 'common sense' in relation to political discourse?
0:37–5:35
4
What is the significance of the Public Sector Equality Duty in Kemi Badenoch's argument?
5:35–7:10
5
How does Kemi Badenoch link equality laws to crime prevention?
7:10–25:27
6
What examples does Kemi Badenoch use to illustrate her points about crime and equality?
25:27–30:08
7
How do the hosts critique Kemi Badenoch's perspective on equality and discrimination?
30:08–32:15
8
What are the potential consequences of the proposed changes to equality laws?
32:15–43:19
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The News Agents
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