Tory Race Report FALLS APART

When Fraser Nelson, editor of the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, was called out for publishing articles by vicious racist and self-confessed anti-Semite Taki Theodoracopulos which praised Greek neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, and Hitler’s Wehrmacht, he dismissed the criticism as “just something on Twitter”. It hadn’t really happened. Now, defenders of the Tories’ race report are on the very same page.

Claire Fox

Given that Taki’s bigotry had indeed happened, that’s not a convincing defence for either the Speccy’s editor, or the likes of genocide denial specialist, child porn excuser, clueless contrarian and unrepentant terrorist sympathiser Claire Fox, who has shown that, as someone from the so-called Institute of Ideas, she has no idea at all.

After the Daily Mail had lauded the report as yet another means for its hacks and editors to deflect from the paper’s all too frequent lapses into dog-whistle racism, the pushback began. It gathered steam yesterday after rather a lot of those the report claims to have consulted have revealed that they were not properly consulted, or not consulted at all.

Brown person says no racism here, honestly

As the Guardian has reported, “The commission notes it requested new research from a number of sources, including Veena Raleigh and Shilpa Ross from The King’s Fund. But a spokesperson for the independent thinktank said this was not ‘strictly true’ … Raleigh and Ross presented some existing work from The King’s Fund, but this research was not produced or delivered especially for the commission, they said”.

Also, “Two other academics, Dr Ria Ivandic and Prof Tom Kirchmaier from the London School of Economics, confirmed to the Guardian that they were not commissioned to do new research for the report, despite being listed as such. They had only participated in a one-hour academic discussion on policing”. And it got worse. Much worse.

“Kamaldeep Bhui, professor of psychiatry at University of Oxford and editor in chief of the British Journal of Psychiatry, had his research cited in the report, though he is not listed as a stakeholder. ‘My view is that it’s really poor scholarship and really poor chairmanship and interpretation,’ he said”. On health data, the Guardian had yet more bad news.

“Public health experts have condemned an official report on racial disparities in the UK as flawed and misleading for stating there was little evidence of systemic health differences due to ethnicity, saying the authors had ‘cherry-picked’ data and lacked expertise … ‘It’s very poorly done, very weak,’ said Prof Azeem Majeed, head of the department of primary care and public health at Imperial College London. ‘The panel doesn’t contain any health experts … It’s very, very disappointing, not systematic at all’”.

An article for the British Medical Journal called the report “a political manifesto rather than an authoritative expert report”. Doreen Lawrence has said the report is a “green light for racists”. So what does the great Claire Fox have to say about all that?

“Pile-ons are not evidence. #RaceReport stands or falls on its merits, not how many denounce it or how famous they are”. It’s only something on Twitter! Well-known critics don’t count! Except this “report” is now toast. And Claire Fox, like her pals, is bust.

Letting the witless contrarians of Spiked into Government has one problem. Called reality.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet8