Give us detail on racism inquiry

PM misses opportunity to unify

BORIS JOHNSON’S pledge to establish a crossgovernment commission to examine “all aspects” of racial inequality in Britain begs this crucial question: Where’s the detail?

This follows the Prime Minister’s curious decision to make such a significant announcement in passing as part of a wider newspaper column about the desecration of statues like Churchill’s.

And, by doing so, Mr Johnson risks the charge of opportunism from his critics unless he can provide the clarity that would have been expected if he had unveiled the commission in Parliament, and as he should have done.

What is its remit? Who is going to head it? When is it going to report? Will its recommendations be implemented and enforced? And what about current injustices – like the failure to make cladding on tower blocks safe three years after Grenfell?

These are just five questions. There are many more. Yet, if the

PM is going to regain the initiative following the Covid-19 pandemic, and then his slow response to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in the USA, he needs to show both statesmanship and statecraft.

His primary purpose is not to write sundry newspaper columns. He is Prime Minister, in case he needs reminding, and it falls to him to provide some leadership at this time of national soul-searching.

As a One Nation leader, it is right that the PM should be turning his attention to the policy failures which continue to perpetuate all those racial injustices that are still causing so much offence in the 2020s.

But, given how his predecessor Theresa May came to office in 2016 promising to tackle such ‘burning injustices’, how will this new initiative differ from all previous attempts to tackle racial discrimination in all its forms? Perhaps you’d care to tell us, Prime Minister.