Kemi Badenoch’s speech today on the need to overhaul equalities legislation has been framed as a justified reaction to the horrendous Henry Nowak case – but in reality it is part of a policy arms race on the right of politics to own the culture wars agenda.
The old legal adage of “hard cases makes bad laws” could well apply to the traumatising end to Mr Nowak’s life, as he bled to death while police ignored his pleas for help after he has been stabbed by a man who falsely claimed he was the victim of a racist attack by the 18-year-old.
The case has provoked widespread outrage and acted as confirmation for those on the right of politics that current equalities laws in the UK are not “equal” but are in fact discriminating against white people and perhaps white males, in particular.
Both the Tories and Reform have claimed that the problem stemmed from Hampshire Constabulary police officers being so afraid of being called racist because the assailant was Sikh and had claimed he had suffered racism, that they ignored the plight of the real victim, a white 18-year-old man.
The conduct of the officers is being reviewed and whether that was a factor in the case has not yet been established. But, as ever, the political issue is not about the case itself, it is one that those on the right of politics have been building towards for some time.
This is a political message that has been gaining resonance in white working class communities like Makerfield, where a by-election is taking place that could ultimately decide Sir Keir Starmer’s fate as not only leader of Labour but as prime minister.
The Nowak case has put the so-called “anti-woke” agenda front and centre so now there is a clamour for who owns that space. And that is the purpose of the Tory leader’s speech.
There are few more skilled culture warriors than Ms Badenoch, who has been fighting this battle since she became an MP in 2017.
She first made her name lambasting a Labour whip for assuming she was a Labour MP because she is a black woman.
Some felt she has overly obsessed about the culture wars at times beyond her previous ministerial portfolios.
I remember attending a Q&A session after a speech she gave in London as trade secretary where she was supposed to talk about international trade and spent the entire 30 minutes attacking positive discrimination.
Now though she has even more motivation. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is currently the predominant party of the right, in terms of public popularity, and this agenda is one which both parties vying for a limited pool of votes is trying to claim.
Reform knows this and went after Ms Badenoch with a misguided and inaccurate portrayal of her past comments, suggesting somehow she was a supporter of Black Lives Matter when the opposite was true.
However, as with many things, Mr Farage and his party are strong on inflammatory language, calling for “pure cold rage” after the stabbing and framing it as evidence of systemic bias within policing, but he remains a vacuum on policies.
This is where Ms Badenoch has spied her opportunity to claim this political space with her announcement of an overhaul of the 2010 Equalities Act. She has staked her claim to the policy ground and if Reform do the same it will look as though they are copying her.
All Reform could do was deploy former Tory home secretary Tory Suella Braverman, who defected to the party earlier this year, to claim on X (formerly Twitter) that Ms Badenoch was three years behind her.
We have seen similar manoeuvres regarding attacks on transgender rights as well in recent months so it is perhaps not surprising that the equalities consensus is all but dead now even with race.
While Ms Badenoch’s language is measured and thoughtful the reality is that she, just like Mr Farage, is doing the one thing the Nowak family did not want, which is to turn their son’s death into a political football. It has become the excuse for a policy push focussed on trying to be top dog on the centre right of politics.
Never mind the threats to the rights and protections of the disabled, pregnant women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, all that can be discarded to stay alive in a politics defined by culture wars.
