The Political War Over Equality Laws

Tue, Jun 09 2026 /Mpelembe Media/ — Kemi Badenoch argues that equality legislation like the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) has inadvertently created a culture where public authorities are so terrified of career-ending accusations of racism that they replace common sense and critical thinking with bureaucratic box-ticking. She claims this deep-seated fear has caused institutions to withhold information, avoid difficult conversations, and become “institutionally incompetent” when dealing with issues of race and identity.

While this highlights a genuine concern about the effectiveness of public services, the sources demonstrate several ways in which this dynamic can be—and has been—weaponized by bad actors:

1. Weaponization by criminals to evade justice The most immediate weaponization of this institutional fear was executed by a murderer. During the tragic killing of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, the perpetrator, Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist attack. By cynically exploiting police guidance that treats hate crimes as a priority, the killer successfully manipulated the officers into handcuffing the bleeding victim as he lay dying, rather than treating him for stab wounds.

2. Weaponization by the far-right to stoke “white grievance” Following the murder, far-right and anti-immigrant politicians immediately hijacked the tragedy and the debate over “two-tier policing” to push a “white grievance” narrative. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage weaponized the incident to claim that the UK has a culture where “the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities,” explicitly inciting the public to react to the police’s actions with “pure, cold rage”. This inflammatory rhetoric had direct, violent consequences, sparking riots in Southampton where far-right agitators and vigilantes clashed with police, injuring 11 officers and a police dog.

3. Exploitation by international populists The incident was also weaponized globally by actors seeking to advance their own ideological agendas. US Vice President JD Vance used the teenager’s death to blame the “mass invasion of immigrants,” while tech billionaire Elon Musk publicly branded the police officers “disgusting” and offered to fund a wrongful death lawsuit. Meanwhile, far-right politicians in Poland, France, Spain, and Japan circulated harrowing clips of the victim’s dying moments to fuel domestic anti-immigrant and populist rhetoric in their respective countries.

4. Political opportunism to strip away universal civil rights Finally, political actors are weaponizing this targeted concern over public sector bureaucracy to justify the total demolition of decades of civil rights. While Badenoch suggests a targeted repeal of the PSED, Reform UK has used the backlash to call for the total abolition of the Equality Act 2010 on their first day in power. Under the guise of protecting white working-class boys from “positive action,” this extreme policy would legally strip fundamental workplace protections from everyone in the UK. Charities and unions warn that repealing the Act would remove job security for up to 500,000 pregnant women a year and effectively hand employers a “blank cheque” to mistreat staff and legally discriminate against disabled people, women, and ethnic minorities.

The “Equality Duty” Dilemma: Why the UK’s Secret Administrative Engine Is Sparking a Political War

In the cold light of a Southampton street, the logic of the modern British state recently reached its most grisly conclusion. The video is, by all accounts, agonizing to watch: 18-year-old student Henry Nowak bleeding out on the pavement, his life escaping him while his hands remained clamped in police irons. He had been stabbed, yet he was treated as a combatant because his killer—the man now serving life—had the presence of mind to falsely accuse his victim of racism. In those frantic moments, the police appeared paralyzed, prioritizing the protocol of a hate-crime accusation over the visceral urgency of a sucking chest wound.This tragedy has transformed from a local horror into the primary exhibit in a national trial of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). While it sounds like the sort of dry, administrative plumbing only a lawyer could love, the PSED is the invisible engine driving every gear of the British state. Established under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, it mandates that every public body—from the Home Office to the local library—must have “due regard” for the need to eliminate discrimination and foster good relations. But as the Nowak case suggests, the engine may be seizing up, replaced by what critics call a state of “institutional incompetence.”

The Jurisprudence of Paralysis: When Process Replaces Judgment

The legal threshold for “due regard” is not merely a suggestion; since the 2008  R (Brown)  ruling, it has been defined as a “conscious approach and state of mind.” In practice, however, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch argues this has mutated into a defensive crouch that effectively lobotomizes public officials. The critique is biting: by forcing administrators to obsess over protected characteristics, the state has outsourced its common sense to a “tick-box” culture where the fear of a career-ending accusation of racism outweighs the duty to preserve life or maintain order.”They have spent so long worrying about institutional racism that they have become institutionally incompetent,” Badenoch recently declared. Her argument is that the PSED has forced the state to “stop thinking,” creating a vacuum filled by activist-driven guidance. However, an investigative eye must note a crucial nuance from the Nowak trial: the presiding judge pointedly did  not  endorse the theory that the arresting officers were specifically hamstrung by hate-crime priority guidance. While the political narrative is potent, the legal reality of the police’s failure remains a matter of individual operational catastrophe rather than a proven statutory mandate.

The Churchill-to-Insects Pivot: A Currency of Erasure?

The reach of the PSED extends far beyond the police cordon, into the very pockets of the citizenry. The Bank of England’s decision to scrub historical titans like Winston Churchill from future banknotes in favor of “nature-themed” imagery—specifically birds and insects—has become a flashpoint for the culture war.To the administrative state, this was a triumph of the Duty: a public consultation was held to ensure inclusivity. Yet the results of that consultation revealed a telling hierarchy: historical figures were demoted to a distant third place, trailing behind “nature” and “landmarks.” To Badenoch and her allies, this is the PSED used as a tool for a “divisive agenda,” where national heritage is treated as a liability to be managed rather than a legacy to be honored. The transition from the man who defeated Nazism to the common housefly is, in this worldview, the ultimate symbol of a state that has lost its sense of purpose in a fog of “identity politics.”

The Stop and Search Paradox

Perhaps the most striking tactical shift in this war is Badenoch’s stance on policing. In an era where “disproportionality” is the ultimate administrative sin, a leader from a minority background is calling for a tripling of stop and search. Her logic is a cold, pro-police utilitarianism: if black boys are disproportionately the victims of knife crime, then the state has a moral obligation to search them more frequently to find the weapons.”I’m not going to run away from an outcry and allow other people’s children to be killed, just so I can have a quiet life,” she argues. It is a calculated gamble, trading statistical “fairness” for the preservation of life, and she claims the backing of the very people the PSED claims to protect: the “mothers of young black boys” who see the carnage on their doorsteps. It is a direct challenge to the PSED’s core aim of “fostering good relations,” suggesting that the path to safety requires the state to ignore the optics and focus on the body count.

The Non-Delegable Nightmare

Beneath the political rhetoric lies a high-stakes legal trap for the private sector. The PSED is a “non-delegable” duty. This means that when a public authority outsources a function—such as a security firm transporting prisoners or a private company running a hospital ward—the legal burden remains squarely on the shoulders of the state.As a policy analyst would observe, this creates a fertile ground for “Lawfare.” We saw the precursor to this in the 2007  R (Eisai)  case, where the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) tried to argue that doctors could use “common sense” to avoid the discriminatory effects of their guidance. The court rejected this, ruling that the institution itself must substantively prove it has exercised its duty. In today’s outsourced world, this means private contractors are suddenly subject to public law standards they were never designed to navigate. For activists, judicial reviews have become a surgical tool to shut down public-private partnerships by proving a lack of “rigour” in the administrative process.

The “Truss on Steroids” Gamble

The political backdrop for this assault on the administrative state is the volatile 2026 electoral map. The Conservative Party is currently bifurcating. In May’s local elections, the party hailed a “Westminster win,” recapturing the iconic council. But the celebrations masked “mortifying” losses in the Tory heartlands of Essex and Suffolk, where Reform UK didn’t just make gains—they triggered a wipeout. In Havering, the Conservatives were obliterated as Reform surged to 39 seats.Badenoch’s response has been to move the party to the right “every day,” explicitly telling “One Nation” centrists to “get out of the way” if they fear her populist trajectory. This rightward lurch—including the plan to scrap the PSED and abolish stamp duty—has been characterized by Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper as  “Liz Truss on steroids.”  It is a high-risk strategy: abandoning the centrist soul of the party in a desperate bid to out-Farage Nigel Farage.

Can the State Function Without a Mandate for Fairness?

The United Kingdom now faces a fundamental choice between two competing visions of justice. The Labour Government remains anchored in its “moral mission,” utilizing the upcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill as a lever to lift 500,000 children out of poverty. To them, the Duty is a necessary shield for the vulnerable.Conversely, the Conservative opposition sees that same shield as a straitjacket. They argue that public service workers do not need a legal mandate to treat people with dignity—that the “Duty” has itself become the very barrier to the justice it was meant to protect.As the legislative battles of 2026 loom, the question for the public is no longer about the spirit of the law, but its consequences. Can a modern, pluralistic state function fairly on “common sense” alone, or has the administrative engine become so clogged with the debris of identity politics that it can no longer see the dying student on the pavement?