Kemi declares war on 'woke recruitment' with vow to end diversity hiring
Kemi Badenoch declared war on 'woke' recruitment as she vowed to end diversity quotas as part of her plan to tackle separatism in the UK.The Tory leader said she would commission an integration and cohesion plan to unite Britain around a 'common culture and identity'.It would overhaul equality laws, replace the promotion of multiculturalism with a national story and examine Islamist extremism.It would also set out the 'culture that we want people to assimilate into, what we expect and what we will enforce', she added.In a speech at the Policy Exchange think tank, she said: 'Separatism is on the rise in our country, because for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics through their own game.She defined separatism as 'a way of living that keeps a group apart from the wider society' as she said the UK was a home, not a hotel.Mrs Badenoch claimed separatism was 'most visible in some Muslim communities, with extremism its most violent expression'.She said that the biggest victims of separatism were children kept from society, women who blocked from working and girls married off too young to people they'd never met. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she would commission an integration and cohesion plan to unite Britain around a 'common culture and identity'. Join the debateHow should Britain balance unity with respect for cultural differences in hiring and education?'This is the reality that Labour and the Green Party and others who pander to separatism, pretend not to see. They call it community. I call it coercion.'She criticised the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, accusing the Green Party of attempting to 'mobilise voters on ethnicity and religion, not domestic priorities'.'People were voting not based on who would increase their wages or fix their schools, but on who would protect the interests of their identity groups and punish those who they disagree with. This is not healthy and it is not British,' she said.'It is appalling that separatist campaigning was carried out in Urdu by the Green Party,' she added after it was accused of stoking sectarianism.However, she said she disagreed with Reform UK about the impact of 'family voting' when a husband enters the booth to inform the decisions of his wife.She said she did not believe women were 'marched into the voting booth to stop them from voting Reform', but claimed something 'much deeper and disturbing' was happening.Her integration commission will report in October, ahead of the Conservative Party conference.Among her proposals are to prevent employers from hiring on the grounds of race or protected characteristics to end 'state-sponsored division'.She also proposed a universal set of rules for everyone, a national story told in school curriculums without the 'grievance or guilt' and protecting free speech.The commission will be established to assess how to overhaul the Equality Act 'so it prioritises meritocracy and strengthens integration', Mrs Badenoch said.She added: 'British culture exists. We live it. We benefit from it and we have a duty to defend it and pass it on.'The answer to this is integration, but for integration to work people have to know they are integrating into a culture which is strong and self-confident.'It does not work if Britain is a mess of competing cultures and it cannot work if we are not brave enough to say who we are and what we expect.'
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Kemi declares war on 'woke recruitment' with vow to end diversity hiring
