Can Badenoch’s culture war win back Reform supporters? – The Latest

0:00Nosheen Iqbal:This is The Guardian.

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1:11This is not a left or right-wing problem. It is a common sense problem. We are going to overhaul the Act, starting by removing this duty. What's quite shocking, really, is that she links this duty to major crime and political scandals. people are now saying diversity in its entirety, it's wrong. The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that Adenok is a moderate on this question.

1:36Nosheen Iqbal:From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest. I'm Nashi Nikbal.

1:43Nosheen Iqbal:Amna Modin, you are Community Affairs Correspondent for The Guardian. And we're here today to talk about what potentially looks like a paradox on the face of it. the country's first black female leader of a major political party calling for a total overhaul of equality rules. Amna, could you have a crack at explaining Kemi Badenok's position on the public sector equality duty and essentially what is it first of all? This duty is a legal obligation for public bodies so that's hospitals, police officers, teachers that requires them to have a think before they act and to make sure that they are thinking about equality law so for example if a local council wants to shut down a local library they need to have a think about the impact that could have on local community on children on people from lower income backgrounds on disabled people so for example if you close down that local library and in that area there are quite a lot of disabled people can they access the next nearby library if the answer to that is no, they have to ensure that there's public transport available to them to go to that next library, or there's a mobile library, or they rethink the decision to close down that library.

2:53And so why does Bedanock say that she wants to abolish this duty? Because it sounds quite sensible on the face of it. So she says what was a sensible safeguard has now gone too far. She links a lot of that to Black Lives Matter and what she describes as identity politics. But this is a misreading, perhaps a willful misreading of equality law. This duty has existed since the Stephen Lawrence murder and the inquiry that has followed. Again, it just tells public bodies, why don't you have a think about what impact your actions could go on to have? But she argues that this has become a vehicle for grievance politics, for identity politics, that it's pushing EDI, diversity initiatives, and it means that public bodies are no longer focused on their core responsibilities.

3:36What's quite shocking really is that she links this duty to major crime and political scandals that we've had, such as the Manchester Arena bombing, the Nottingham attacks, Southport and grooming gangs.

3:48Nosheen Iqbal:So Bedanoff is absolutely confident in her beliefs about what this duty leads to. But you've spoken to experts in the field, Amla. Can you tell me what their take is on Bedanoff's claims and what real life impact could this rollback potentially have? Yeah, so I spoke to equality experts, so professors and barristers who were quite sceptical of her linking with this public duty with some of the recent scandals that they've had. Many have just said that it's complete nonsense. On what impact that this could have, they said that the duty can impact disability access, maternity services, again, support for vulnerable children.

4:28But there's a reason this duty exists because it hasn't been common sense in the past. There was a requirement that told them, please stop, have a think.

4:35Nosheen Iqbal:and act on the common sense that she insists that everyone just has by default. And it is curious timing because while Baden-Koch says that she's been working on this policy for months, she did then talk today about the Henry Novak case again and claims that police who arrested Novak were influenced by guidance saying that hate crimes should be treated as a priority. Now, we know that she's a very skilled and experienced culture warrior. She's an avowed fan of Trump's rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the states. How much do you think, though, that this political strategy will help her win back those former conservative voters who have defected to either reform or to restore?

5:18Bedanuck has been really consistent on this question on racial equality, on gender equality. So when she was the equalities minister, she was very, very critical of what she described as critical race theories in schools. she's always been very critical about the idea that the uk is institutionally racist she was behind the widely criticized race report that said that the uk does not have an issue of institutional racism the sole report exactly so she has always been quite consistent on this she does believe that people should be treated as individuals that this is an element of universalism which i think many of us can agree with but it's worth saying she's doing this now because there's figures to the right of her um who are winning voters you mentioned reform of course and then there's also restore reform has called for the equality act to be abolished in its entirety in its entirety that should concern all of us because that would mean that it would be legal to discriminate against you if you're a woman if you're a black person if you're a disabled person so we really need to ask ourselves do we want to live in a world where someone could be turned away to rent a property or to be turned away because they're pregnant or they've had a baby recently and they might have another baby soon so the employee wants to get rid of them like do we want to live in a society where that exists or people who experience that have no legal redress to challenge that.

6:35Nosheen Iqbal:Well, Bejah-Luk says she's saying this and working on this policy because she believes it promotes unity. But there's an irony that it seems to foster more division than anything else. And she has takes this real pull yourself up by a bootstraps approach to the workplace to equality full stop. I mean, what do you make of how she's tackled all of this when And she's, as you say, competing with the likes of Restore and Reform. Yeah. Bedouin has quite a consistent narrative. But what's quite frightening now is that it's not the most right wing narrative in our political system. I would say about 10 years ago, some of the things that she was saying was quite shocking, was quite frightening.

7:12But again, she now seems to fit more closely to the centre right compared to what Reform was saying. And again, what Restore was saying. What seems to be happening in British society is several things at once. There is real deep-seated public anger at policing failures around, again, so many different issues, failures around immigration, failures around public service. You know, I do think that anger is real from my reporting from going to different parts of this country. At the same time, Britain is a remarkably diverse country and nearly the majority of the people that live here are fine with living with people that are different from them.

7:50What we're really seeing from the right is two arguments coming. One, and I think this is where Bajanuk's camp sits, asks how do institutions respond to diversity? She's suggesting that they've been doing it wrong since BLM or perhaps since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, that DEI or EDI or identity politics has gone too far and that actually some of these policies are discriminating against white Britons. But there's an argument to the right of her And it's quite scary, actually, that, you know, people are now saying diversity in its entirety, it's wrong. We need mass deportation of people who've been here for several generations.

8:27We need mass deportations of people here who are migrants who are legally here. The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that Baden-Ock is a moderate on this question.

8:39Nosheen Iqbal:No, I mean, I mean, arguably, you know, she can talk about this stuff. But she's so far from achieving power that it kind of seems irrelevant to some people. Like, why are you talking about it? It's just a distraction. However, as you say, this stuff seeps into the discourse. It moves the conversation further along. And Bedienk is there, again, without actually being prime minister, having a massive impact on policy and on the conversation that people have. And I wonder, you know, in your reporting, as you've been across the country, how reflective do you think her position actually is of where the British public sits?

9:13I think we have to be honest that the public conversation has definitely shifted. Ideas that would have been considered fringe perhaps a decade ago, people are saying on doorstops, people are making those comments on Facebook. I understand X is a bit perhaps to the right of other social media platforms. It's his own beast, isn't it? Yeah. But people are saying this in a way that I don't think they would have said a decade ago. When you say say this, saying racist things. Yes, yeah. Yeah. I think people are saying quite shocking racist things about people of colour in this country. They're saying quite shocking things about what equality law actually says and the impact it will have.

9:50But I think what we have to do is ask them to be very particular, ask them to give us examples. Right. So if reform went to abolish the Equality Act, we have to ask them, do you, are you saying that if a woman has been fired because she is pregnant, that is OK in a reform country? Like we should really begin to ask those questions because the other thing that really came out from speaking to experts is how fuzzy a lot of what the right wants to happen to the Equality Act is. So they say they want to abolish the Equality Act and they want to bring their own act. OK, well, what does that mean for direct and indirect discrimination?

10:22What does that mean if you're an Asian person? Can someone just call you the P word at work? We should begin to ask those kind of questions because I don't think they've got answers to that.

10:31Nosheen Iqbal:Amna, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. That's it for today. My thanks to Amna Modin, The Guardian's community affairs correspondent. You can keep up with all of Amna's reporting and coverage of this story over at theguardian.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was produced by Bryony Moore and Annie Levespa. It was presented by me, Noshi Nikbal, and the senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin.

11:02Nosheen Iqbal:This is The Guardian.

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