Kemi Badenoch has pledged to overhaul equality law, rewrite the national curriculum and end what she called “state-sponsored identity politics” as she unveiled plans to tackle “separatism” in Britain.
The Conservative leader said that there was a risk the country would become divided into “parallel societies” unless governments moved towards assimilation and shared national norms.
Badenoch argued that decades of integration policy had failed and meant that communities had become socially and politically detached from wider British life, while encouraging electoral campaigning based on ethnicity and religion.
She said last week’s Gorton & Denton by-election demonstrated this and added: “People were voting not based on who will increase their wages or fix their schools, but on who will protect the interests of their identity groups.”
In a speech at the Policy Exchange think tank in Westminster, Badenoch said this showed a “separatism” of communities living alongside — but not fully participating in — British society. She pledged the Tories would introduce policies based on assimilation rather than integration, and that newcomers should adapt to British norms.
“If you join a country, you join the country — you don’t create your own separate thing,” she said.
Among the plans was a promise to stop teaching children that “all cultures are equal” and overhaul the Equality Act to ensure “anti-discrimination is not used as a mechanism to undermine meritocracy”.
Badenoch said she would launch a cultural and integration commission that would be tasked with producing an integration and cohesion plan before the party’s conference in October. It would look at immigration, education, equality legislation and public-sector practice to define what Badenoch described as “the culture that we want people to assimilate into”.
Badenoch would introduce what she called a “meritocracy test […] so that we make sure that anti-discrimination is not used as a mechanism to undermine meritocracy, and to align incentives so integration and assimilation become the path of least resistance”.
It would mean public bodies would be barred from using race or identity characteristics in recruitment, promotion, admissions or procurement decisions.
Badenoch also said she would introduce “universalism”, which would bring in consistent rules across education, policing, welfare and immigration systems to prevent what she described as a “two-tier” approach to enforcement.
“We will review every single code of practice to ensure standardisation across public bodies and prevent them from doing their own thing,” she said.
Badenoch said: “Our curriculum should tell a coherent national story. One that is inclusive of the many people who have come to Britain, but without the grievance or guilt which is corroding our cultural confidence.
“We will not teach our children that ‘all cultures are equal’, instead we will teach them why Britain’s civic culture matters.”
That work will be led by the historian Professor Robert Tombs and the former Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman.
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There will be a review into Islamic extremism “and how it feeds on separatism so we tackle both the ideology and the conditions that let it grow”, and a review into institutional “self-censorship” led by Lord Young of Acton.
Badenoch said: “This is not just about culture. It is about growth, trust and the cost of running a country, so there will be an economic thread running throughout this work because integration affects our economic growth. The fact is, migrants contribute more, and barriers to participation in society mirror barriers to participation in the workplace.”
She added: “We are a multi-racial country, proudly so. That is the real legacy of Empire. But a multi-racial country only works if we are honest about what holds us together, and serious about defending it.”
