Kemi Badenoch told GMB:
“We need to bring back equality under the law. What Nigel Farage is doing is reinforcing the difference. I have said that we need to find what we have in common, not what separates us. I don’t want to hear about black lives matter. I don’t want to hear about white lives matter. We all matter.
Enough of this nonsense where we keep separating everybody and splitting people into different groups. We are descending into tribalism. I do not want that. It is why I say that we should be a multi-racial country, not a multicultural country. Let’s have one shared culture, British culture.
How the police treat everyone should not matter depending on the colour of their skin. And we shouldn’t pretend that racism is something that only happens to ethnic minorities. It happens to everybody, black or white. What I do not like is seeing Nigel Farage jump on this issue when he doesn’t do any work.
He doesn’t turn up to parliament. He doesn’t take things seriously, but he sees this as an opportunity for him to grandstand. I am not grandstanding. I will say that a lot more needs to be done.
Policing is operationally independent. I think we need to look a bit more at what is going on in terms of how the police are conducting themselves. There are many hundreds of thousands of great police officers out there. I think we should be specific about what these officers did, there are many good police officers who help people of all colors and all religions every single day.”
Badenoch added: “Nigel Farage is taking sides. I’m not taking sides. I’m saying enough of this. We need to stop this racialising of our society. We are multi-racial, yes, but we need to stop using race as a way of defining laws, as a way of hiring people. Let’s treat everyone equally. No two-tier policing. No believing that racism only happens to ethnic minorities. It happens to everyone.” A furious attack on Farage…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”