In a speech today, , Leader of the Conservative
Party, announced a set of new plans to deal with “separatism,
culture and integration”.
Kemi has said that the Conservatives will go into the next
General Election with a fully-formed Integration and
Cohesion Plan.
To achieve that aim, Kemi has launched a Cultural and
Integration Commission, which will prepare an interim
report by the time of Conservative Party Conference in October
this year. This will set out, in her words, “the culture that we
want people to assimilate into, what we expect, and what we will
enforce”.
The Cultural and Integration Commission will
examine six key areas:
1) We will end identity politics in the state, full
stop.
Protected characteristics will not be used as a positive criteria
for hiring, promotion, admissions, or procurement.
There will be no more state-sponsored division. From now on,
every public body will act based on merit and competence, not
grievance and quotas.
She will ask the commission to investigate how we ensure that
integration is a duty where Britain sets the terms.
2) Universalism: one set of rules for everyone, enforced
fairly and visibly.
Our institutions will model those terms and enforce them.
Universalism will run through every aspect of government policy,
from education, to policing, welfare and immigration.
We will review every single code of practice to ensure
standardisation across public bodies and prevent them from doing
their own thing.
This strand of work will be carried out by the Shadow Cabinet
Office team.
3) We will replace the promotion of multi-culturalism in
schools with a national story and civic confidence.
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.
The Shadow Education team will lead this work, supported by
Professor Robert and .
4) We will protect free speech and back people who uphold
common standards.
Teachers, lecturers, public servants, and employers must be able
to state basic facts, teach a coherent national story, and uphold
standards without being intimidated into silence as we saw in the
case of the teacher at Batley Grammar School.
A free society cannot be run by whoever shouts loudest and pushes
hardest.
We will end the institutional self-censorship, that stops people
from doing the right thing..
is to lead a review of this
work.
5) An overhaul of the Equality act so that it prioritises
meritocracy and strengthens integration.
It will look at how we introduce a Meritocracy Test: making sure
that anti-discrimination is not used as a mechanism to undermine
meritocracy.
We want to align incentives so integration and assimilation
become the path of least resistance.
The Shadow Women and Equalities team, and Shadow Cabinet Office
team, have been commissioned to look at this.
6) Work on Islamist extremism and how it feeds on
separatism.
So that we tackle both the ideology on extremism and separatism
and identify the conditions that let it grow.
This is being led by Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Justice Secretary
, and supported by former
Prison Governor Ian Acheson.
Kemi emphasised that this work is:
“…not just about culture. It is about growth, trust, and the cost
of running a country.
“And there will be an economic thread running throughout this
work… because integration affects our economic growth.
“The fact is assimilated migrants contribute more… and barriers
to participation in society mirror participation in the
workplace.
“They are barriers to lifetime earnings and tax contributions.
“We cannot fix integration without breaking cycles of dependency
where communities become net recipients generation after
generation.”
MP, Leader of the
Conservative Party, said:
“Once upon a time we talked about British values of tolerance and
live and let live - muscular liberalism.
“Over the years, this has drifted into something weaker:
tolerance without confidence and principles without enforcement.
“I'm afraid muscular liberalism is no longer enough.
“We must never undersell the value of liberty and freedom. They
are necessary for our society to flourish.
“However, freedom without clarity on boundaries, or clarity on
what needed protecting, has bred a slow normalisation of
separatism.
“It resulted in double standards and parallel norms. Until the
country started to feel like it was running a two-tier system
with different rules for different people.
“What we need is muscular conservatism.
“Muscular conservatism starts from a simple truth:
“We don't want to throw away any of the things that are good
about our society.
“We want to keep them, defend them, and pass them on.
“That means having the courage to set boundaries.
“It means being willing to enforce standards and not be
embarrassed by doing so.”
