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The Labour faction influencing Downing Street’s pitch to Reform UK voters has urged ministers to “root out DEI”.
An article from the Blue Labour campaign group, titled What is to be Done, calls for the government to legislate against diversity, equity and inclusion, echoing the rightwing backlash from Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
Describing itself as part of a tradition of “conservative socialism”, the caucus was founded in 2009 by the academic Maurice Glasman, now a Labour peer. It includes the MPs Dan Carden, Jonathan Brash, Jonathan Hinder and David Smith, who represent seats in the north of England.
Keir Starmer’s turn to the right and framing of Labour as “the party of patriotism” mirror Blue Labour thinking.
Urging the party to renew its “covenant with the British people”, Blue Labour’s article said: “We are proud of our multiracial democracy and we utterly reject divisive identity politics, which undermines the bonds of solidarity between those of different sexes, races and nationalities.
“We should legislate to root out DEI in hiring practices, sentencing decisions and wherever else we find it in our public bodies.”
Earlier this week, the Guardian reported how organisations are rebranding inclusion initiatives to avoid unwanted political attention, reflecting a divergence between trade bodies and employers who believe policies designed to ensure a level playing field are good for business and society, and reactionary politicians.
In February, the equalities minister, Seema Malhotra, said the government was “absolutely committed” to diversity and inclusion, with new legislation that would compel employers with more than 250 staff to report on ethnicity and disability pay gaps progressing though parliament.
Launching the consultation on the equality (race and disability) bill, which closes on 10 June, the disability minister, Stephen Timms, and Malhotra said the “commitment to create a more equal society in which people can thrive whatever their background” was an “essential element” of Labour’s project.
They added: “The reality is far from that goal. For example, currently most ethnic minority groups earn on average less than their white British peers. Similarly, while there has been growth in employment rates for disabled people in recent years, disabled people have, on average, lower incomes than non-disabled people. While previous Labour governments introduced landmark … equality-related legislation, more still remains to be done.”
However, since this year’s local elections, when Reform gained a foothold in local government after seizing scores of seats from Labour, the prime minister has appeared to be trying to counter the threat from Farage by moving further to the cultural right, despite the risk of losing support from minority ethnic voters, who were more likely than white voters to support Labour in the last general election, and left-leaning voters in general.
In mid-May, ministers were forced to strongly deny allegations that Starmer sounded like Enoch Powell in a speech that said Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”, and that “uncontrolled” migration had done “incalculable damage”, as he launched plans to curb net migration.
Blue Labour calls for lower migration in the same article in which it takes aim at DEI, saying: “Immigration is not a distraction or a culture war issue; it is the most fundamental of political questions, a cause of social fragmentation, and the basis of our broken political economy.
“We should drastically reduce immigration, reducing low-skill immigration by significantly raising salary thresholds; closing the corrupt student visa mill system; and ending the exploitation of the asylum system, if necessary prioritising domestic democratic politics over the rule of international lawyers.”
In May, it emerged that net migration almost halved in 2024.
