Kemi Badenoch this weekend waded into the Islamophobia debate. In a public letter to Keir Starmer she urged the government to suspend the operations of its working group looking for a semi-official definition of Islamophobia. Unfortunately she then rather spoilt the effect by suggesting that the group needed to be supplemented by representatives of grooming gang victims, counter-terror experts and free speech activists. You can see why she did this. Nevertheless it could prove a bad miscalculation, and a missed opportunity to land a serious blow on Keir Starmer.
Her message clearly comes across as an acceptance of the existence of the working group and a preparedness to work with it
The government is certainly vulnerable here. Its working group is pretty clearly a put-up job: ostensibly independent, it is expected to reach a predetermined conclusion which can then be rubber-stamped by ministers and ceremonially wheeled out to show how much it cares about Muslim voters. The appointment of super-wet ex-Tory Attorney-General Dominic Grieve as chair fools no one: Grieve himself wrote the foreword to the 2018 report from the APPG on British Muslims which first drew up the definition the government now wants enshrined.
The whole affair is also a kick in the teeth for open government. Under its terms of reference, any advice the group provides is ‘private for Ministers’ and ‘will not be made public.’ And the members themselves are gagged for the duration: they must give 48 hours’ notice to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government before any public comment they plan to make on any matter within the group’s remit.
Even if we forget the hole-in-corner tactics of the government, the proposal itself is a terrible one. Government has no business publicly defining particular opinions with the aim of directing state censure at those who adopt or publicise them; nor is there any acceptable reason why administrators or other authorities should be allowed to treat people differently because of their expressed (and lawfully held) political or religious views. In addition, despite the inevitable protestations that any definition of Islamophobia would be non-legally-binding, there is no doubt that it would in practice leech quickly into our law, for example by being taken into account in judicial review proceedings, prosecutions for public order or online speech offences, decisions by the police whether to arrest speakers for perceived religious offence, and so on. And, quite apart from this, even if it were right to protect faith sensibilities, there is absolutely no case for selecting any one religion, such as Islam, to the exclusion of others. (And yes, I will be consistent: anti-Semitism must be treated similarly. Acceptance by official bodies, such as the College of Policing, of the IHRA-sponsored definition of anti-Semitism, or any other one, must equally go the same way.)
To be fair, Kemi does express some scepticism about whether we need a definition of Islamophobia at all. But what matters is, as they say, the optics. And for the average reader and viewer these are clear. Her message clearly comes across as an acceptance of the existence of the working group and a preparedness to work with it, albeit with input from new groups like free speech activists, grooming-gang survivors, and so on.
This will unfortunately not go down well. No one who thinks seriously will be attracted by the idea that we should make policy on Islamophobia by putting delegates of umpteen warring factions and interest groups onto a government committee and hoping for the best. Moreover, the call for inclusion of grooming gang survivors has all the appearance (intended or otherwise) of identitarianism, bandwagon politics and a cynical pitch for votes.
But there is an even more important point. When it comes to Islamophobia, the threat to Kemi comes not from Labour but from Reform. And, like them or not, Reform has a clear view. There has never been any doubt that Nigel Farage is against the whole idea of official definitions of things like Islamophobia, and for all the right reasons: free speech, administrative overreach, and so on. This view clearly has cut through. Just over a week ago, a pollster suggested that if Labour persisted with its ham-fisted Islamophobia operation, it could hand a 100-seat majority to Reform.
Voters, especially those in the non-metropolitan constituencies that Kemi desperately needs to win over, remain deeply sceptical of the Tories precisely because they see them as Starmer-lite, as part of the old system, without clearly-stated principles. If Kemi comes out as anything other than wholly opposed to the Islamophobia definition, this jaundiced view will be confirmed in spades. Unless Kemi and the Tories really want this, they need to think again, and fast.
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