Kemi on how we build a trust-based society, in the Mail on Sunday

There is a price to pay for indulging in identity politics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Four years ago, during the Covid pandemic, the phrase Black Lives Matter was everywhere. Corporations, public and private, rushed to pledge allegiance to this slogan imported from the US.

Our now Prime Minister and his deputy submitted to the social contagion, bending the knee to BLM in a notorious picture, now the butt of jokes.

No one should be laughing at that picture. It is a terrifying indictment of the mindset of those who now run the country.

It isn’t just that they will capitulate every time a union or trendy mob turns up with demands, it is that they have no idea how to deal with the crisis of identity that has been brewing for a decade and whose latest manifestation was the riots we saw across the country.

Identity politics does not work. Those of us who want to build a stronger Britain should have no time for it, either explicitly or even subtly under the guise of pursuing rights for minority groups.

Successful societies require high levels of trust. A trust-based society is one where people have enough commonality to know that they have shared objectives, shared values, shared beliefs, and so can trust the motives of others.

That is why identity politics is so destructive. Emphasising difference under the cover of ‘diversity’ is a Trojan horse that weakens the bonds of trust.

Differences are inevitable. The dividing line between weak and strong societies is that the strong ones enable their adherents to ‘live with’ differences, not celebrate them or use them to segregate the populace. We shouldn’t be teaching our children to see what divides us. It breeds mistrust.

Britain is still a strong society with high levels of trust. However, in recent years it has felt like the ties that bind us are fraying and that we are becoming more like the low-trust societies that immigrants from all over the world have been running away from.

Nothing showed this change more than the protests in London last year after the October 7 terror attacks in Israel. The assault was shocking beyond comprehension. Families murdered in their beds. Women raped. Babies and children taken hostage.

Yet our streets were soon filled with hordes of joyous people, not appalled at the acts of terror or demanding the perpetrators be brought to justice, but instead protesting against Jews under the guise of attacking Israel.

I met three Israeli mothers whose children were stolen from them. The horror of their stories was unimaginable, but I was shaken with profound shame and disgust as they told me that posters of their missing children were being ripped down by anti-Jewish people in London.

The inability to empathise with the plight of kidnapped children and murdered families is rare – found only in societies where the trust has broken down so comprehensively that people are unable to see their neighbours as human beings.

It is what happened in Rwanda 30 years ago, where people set about chopping up their neighbours with machetes, committing unspeakable acts of horror.

The journey to this level of depravity starts when one community imposes itself on the rest, when its demand for rights suffocates the national conversation. One of the reasons why we in Britain have been able to integrate people from all over the world is because of an unwritten rule that people with roots elsewhere do not play out foreign conflicts on the streets of this country – but that is starting to happen.

We owe a duty of care and civility to our neighbours, whatever their ethnicity, religion or background. All of us are free to practise our faiths and celebrate our cultures, but we must do so in ways that are consistent with fundamental values, such as the rule of law, that are the bedrock of Britain. A low-trust society also makes the job of policing impossible.

I do not envy the police today. Every move they make, every split-second decision or act done in self-defence is captured in social media videos and used against them by those with an agenda.

The cries of two-tier policing did not start this summer. They were heard during the protests after the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, they are heard constantly when people criticise stop and search. Almost every community now feels a grievance against the police.

The cultural establishment has encouraged the belief that some groups are more favoured than others under the law. Blacks vs whites, Muslims vs Jews, women’s rights protesters vs trans rights activists. Yet the law, including the Equality Act, says no such thing.

Our response in government was more scrutiny of the police – even as we occasionally handed them more powers.

All of this has meant a reluctance by some police officers to enforce the law because of fear of endless criticism. There is no point creating new laws if those who have to enforce them are going to be vilified depending on which group they are policing.

Many officers feel that they have to treat one side differently or they will get into trouble. Some have spoken to me confidentially about how hard it is to police now that mobile phones capture everything before their side of the story is out. Many are putting down their arms for fear of not being supported for trying to protect the ‘wrong person’. So what is the answer?

Of course we should condemn criminal behaviour under the cover of protest, but that is not enough. Every mass gathering can be exploited by extremists and criminals. This doesn’t justify dismissing all those protesting as fanatics.

This is why I know that Labour will fail. It appears to have already decided that, after prosecutions, nothing more needs to be done to improve social cohesion.

I have a different view. If I am elected leader of the Conservative Party, it will be on a specific agenda of a colour-blind society based on meritocracy and true equality under the law.

This must be done with a migration strategy that is clear on how many people we can successfully assimilate.

The Blairite approach of outsourcing the integration of immigrants to self-appointed community leaders funded by government grants must stop.

I tried to emphasise this as Equalities Minister, while being condemned as a ‘culture warrior’ by many of those pushing identity politics as progressive policy.

I watched as society gave difference a new name: diversity. Then too many in power talked about how diversity was good, in and of itself, rather than talking about tolerating difference and finding commonality.

Unlike others, I am not afraid of speaking clearly on this. My mixed-race children should not be forced into a world where they have to pick a side.

The vision I have is one where all our children will be at ease with each other and love their country and its complex history.

They deserve a country where the colour of their skin is no more relevant than the colour of their hair or eyes, and that is what I have been fighting for every day and will act for if I win the Conservative Party leadership contest.

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