The Coalition is not doing enough to end the equalities industry - tackling it would be a social and economic good

By Matthew Barrett
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Amidst all the talk of "going for growth", Lib Dem "hate taxes on the rich", and difficult decisions for Ministers having to reduce their budgets, there is one large, flabby area of government which has been insufficiently tackled, but which could be cut down to size easily, popularly, and with huge benefits for society: the equalities sector.

As people working in the private sector - the real economy - knows, hundreds of millions of pounds are wasted on having to comply with equalities regulations, and millions more are spent on funding equalities professionals - unproductive individuals. The Treasury ought to see cutting down on this pernicious aspect of the Whitehall establishment as a priority, not just to save money on those employed to collect meaningless data, but to create the conditions necessary for small and medium-sized businesses to power the recovery.

The idea of having an equalities sector is out-dated. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, when race relations were considered poor, and legislation like the Race Relations Acts of 1965 and '68 were passed, one could see there was some logic in ensuring government adhered to the principle of racial equality it had legislated for. Race relations improved in the second half of the 1980s and 1990s (when, un-coincidentally, a Conservative immigration existed), but, perversely, the 1980s Labour left saw "diversity", "equality", and other such Guardian buzzwords, as a fundamental part of what Labour should believe in, which led to the expansion of the equalities sector when Labour entered office in 1997.

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Lord Marland pulls out of a trade trip to Libya as the Mohammed film protests rage. But note how quiet Britain has been (fingers crossed)

By Paul Goodman
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The application of the Government's new Prevent policy, which draws clear distinctions between extremism and non-extremism, and the untangling of our engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan - two U.S marines were killed yesterday at the base where Prince Harry is stationed - have seen media coverage of Muslims in Britain wind down (and since most news by definition is bad news, such coverage as a rule is relentlessly negative).

This may be about to change.  The Financial Times (£) reports this morning that Lord Marland, the Trade Minister, has cancelled a planned visit to Libya in the wake of the horrible murder of the U.S Ambassador there.  The film about Mohammed that has caused convulsions worldwide follows a revisionist Channel 4 series about the origins of Islam, the launch of which was cancelled for security reasons.  And Baroness Cox is seeking to ban sharia courts or councils. She wants to introduce a bill which "would make it a criminal offence for any individual or group to pose as a proper legal court".

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How to get the best out of Sayeeda Warsi

By Paul Goodman
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A Conservative Party Chairman who sits in the Lords is no less accessible to party members than one who sits in the Commons.  But there are two reasons why he or she should be a member of the latter. First, a Commons Chairman is more accessible to Tory MPs: they can't approach the Chairman in the voting lobbies, or huddle with him round a Commons tea table, if he simply isn't there.  Second, and more importantly, an MP has a certain independence from Downing Street.  He has been sent to Parliament by his constituents, not appointed to it by the Prime Minister.

Former Chairmen such as Lords Baker, Patten and Tebbit were among the biggest of Big Beasts.  But they also had an advantage that neither of today's co-Chairmen had: they could look Margaret Thatcher or John Major in the eye as fellow MPs.  By removing the Chairmanship from the Commons, as it were, David Cameron has moved it nearer Number 10, and it has been further weakened by being divided in two.  This should change.  Members and MPs and the media and voters respond instinctively to a single Chairman who carries a natural authority of his own.

This is why Tim Montgomerie and I want to see as Chairman, respectively, Michael Gove and William Hague - two senior Cabinet Ministers and MPs of top-flight ability who the Cameron/Osborne duopoly listen to carefully.  (We will fight it out between us, while the Prime Minister doubless earmarks someone else for the post.)  So Sayeeda Warsi and Andrew Feldman should both be moved from their current co-Chairmen posts, though given Lord Feldman's management skills there's no reason why he shouldn't stay on as Chief Executive.

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Theresa May to target migration loophole and tell judges foreign criminals do not have absolute right to family life

By Matthew Barrett
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Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, the Home Secretary Theresa May was able to promote her counter-attack Sunday initiatives: immigration and deporting foreign criminals. 

Mrs May began with immigration, saying that "we’ve already looked at non-EU economic migrants, and student visas and settlement and now we’re looking at family". A current loophole in the immigration system is that which allows spouses and children to migrate to Britain without proper safeguards. Mrs May outlined her objection to this:

"This isn't just about the numbers though, in terms of family, because we think it is right that somebody who is looking to bring somebody into the UK to join them as a spouse or a partner should be able to support them financially, and should not be bringing them in on the basis they're going to be reliant on the state"

As a result, the required income level for migrants wishing to bring a spouse should be £18,600, Mrs May said. Those wishing to bring a spouse and one child would be required to be earning £22,400, and for every extra child, the amount to be earned increases. 

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A small minority of Pakistani men, warns Sayeeda Warsi, see women as "second class citizens" and white women as "third class citizens"

By Tim Montgomerie
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“There is a small minority of Pakistani men who believe that white girls are fair game and we have to be prepared to say that. You can only start solving a problem if you acknowledge it first... This small minority who see women as second class citizens, and white women probably as third class citizens, are to be spoken out against."

With these words the straight-talking Baroness Warsi, the co-Chairman of the Conservative Party, has entered the debate about the sexual grooming of young girls in Rochdale by men, mainly of Pakistani origin. If Muslim and other leaders fail to be “open and front-footed” she warns that extremists such as the BNP will fill the gap and peddle hate. Former Home Secretary Jack Straw had been the most senior politician to comment until now. He had stated "there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls" and see them as "easy meat".

Read Baroness Warsi's full interview in the London Evening Standard.

Her comments follow tip-toeing and obfuscation by other public figures. The Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Steve Heywood, has for example denied race and origin as an important factor. "It just happens," he said, "that in this particular area and time, the demographics were that these were Asian men." Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner, had also tried to diminish the cultural factors in Rochdale.

This is not the first time the Tory Chairman has tackled extremists within the Muslim and Asian communities. She did so two years ago after fanatics pelted her with eggs.

Tokenism and ignorance: how the Conservative Party misplayed its hand with ethnic minority votes. And what it can do to improve.

By Paul Goodman
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Knowing one group of ethnic minority voters...

Mohammed Razzaq died not long before I was selected as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe, so I never got the chance to meet one of the first Tory Asian mayors in the country.  A wave of migrants left the part of Kashmir that is effectively controlled by Pakistan to work in the High Wycombe's paper mills and furniture factories, joined trade unions and thus were thus placed automatically on the conveyer belt that led to the Labour Party.  Razzaq was part of it, and time made his switch to the Conservatives less unusual.  As the years passed and living standards rose, clan politics, the Tory grip on local politics, disillusion with Labour and - I like to think - a growing awarness that Conservative policies work combined to give the party an unusually high share of this almost exclusively Kashmiri (or Pakistani) origin and Muslim Asian vote.

My swing in both 2001 and 2005 (the two elections I fought and won) was roughly the regional average - and this in what was then the Tory constituency with the largest proportion of Muslim voters in the country.  The shift to me was therefore either disproporionately large among non-Asian voters - broadly speaking, the white majority - or shared out fairly evenly among voters of all backgrounds.  The truth probably lies somewhere between the two.  I would be surprised if I won less than a third of the Asian vote in 2001 and more than two-fifths or so in 2005.  This had less to do with my merits or otherwise than, as I am indicating, unusual voting ( the recent Runnymede Trust briefing found that an average of only 13% of Pakistani-origin vote Conservative) in an unusal Tory seat.

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It's time to end the Tory war on multiculturalism (reprise)

By Paul Goodman
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Gavin Barwell wrote on this site last year that Lord Tebbit's cricket test should be torn up:

"I would love our Prime Minister, who has done so much to transform perceptions of the Conservative Party for the better, to give a speech doing to Norman Tebbit’s cricket test what he did to the Margaret Thatcher’s “There’s no such thing as society” quote.  Yes, it is important to have loyalty to this country but your roots are important too."

I have put it a different way: it's time to end the Tory war on multiculturalism:

"First, because the word...means so many things to so many people, as now to be almost meaningless.  Second, because it isn't helping the Party win votes...Third, because the M-word has become a dissipation of energies better focused "like a laser beam" on the struggle against extremism and the ideology that underpins it."

And set out some key facts separately:

"Migrants and their descendants are on the whole less likely to vote Conservative than the rest of the population. In 2010, the Tories...won only 16 per cent of the ethnic minority vote. The proportion of such voters was under one in ten in 2001. By 2050 ethnic minorities will make up a fifth of the population."

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Five lessons from Prevent - following today's Home Affairs Select Committee report

By Paul Goodman
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I haven't yet had the opportunity to read today's Home Affairs Select Committee report in to Prevent in full, but the Home Office presumably has: it says that the committee "broadly support[s] the outcome of the Prevent review and the revised strategy".

The Committee's alertness to the dangers of neo-nazi terrorism - which the BBC has swooped on - and the need to remove violent extremist material from the net seem sensible.  I look forward to reading the whole report.

Its publication is as good a moment as any to ask what lessons can be learned from the history of Prevent - and recent events in relation to violent extremism and extremism more broadly.  I draw five conclusions.

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Baroness Warsi is the most powerful example of Tory feminism

By Joseph Willits 
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With the release of 'The Iron Lady' last Friday, political commentary has focused on feminism, and women in politics a great deal. This morning in a Telegraph blog, Cristina Odone discusses the superiority of Tory feminism. She writes:

"Blue feminists don’t go in for the tokenism their red counterparts support. They despise positive discrimination as a confidence-sapper. Red feminists want the nomenklatura filled with quotas and box-ticking representatives; but blue feminists argue that women, like men, should be chosen on merit, not sex. Knowing they’re the best for the job gives them the self-confidence that the Left’s token women lack."

Whilst other commentators have been keen to focus on rising female Tory MPs such as Louise Mensch, Claire Perry and Amber Rudd as examples of card carrying Tory feminists, a more subtle, yet incredibly powerful example would be that of Baroness Warsi.

Commenting on the guilty verdict for Stephen Lawrence's killers, Trevor Phillips cited Warsi's position in the Cabinet, as an example of how far politics and race relations had come since 1993.

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The Lawrence family have led a "dignified pursuit of justice, they are a fine example to us all" says Boris Johnson

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has issued a statement on the sentencing of Gary Dobson and David Norris, guilty of murdering Stephen Lawrence. He said:

"The failures in the Stephen Lawrence murder case have been a long running sore for us as a city and an embarrassment to our police force. I, like everyone across the country, have always been in awe of the Lawrence family's dignified pursuit of justice, they are a fine example to us all. Today's sentencing is a reflection of their tireless determination and also sends a bold message to anyone else involved in this crime. This case is certainly not closed but I am relieved that some justice at last has been done."