Andy Burnham is Labour's Greater Manchester Mayor. He was the Labour MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017, and served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary, and Health Secretary in Gordon Brown's Cabinet. He sat down for an interview at the 2025 Byline Festival with Hardeep Matharu, Editor-in-Chief of Byline Times

HM: You have had an interesting political journey. You are currently Labour's Greater Manchester Mayor. You were a Labour MP and Cabinet minister for many years. You grew up in the north-west. What made you want to become an MP and get into politics in the first place and why did you then leave Westminster?

AB: I came into Parliament at 31 years old in 2001 thinking that I'd be able to right some of the wrongs I'd seen growing up in the north-west: the north-south divide, the sense sometimes that people were treated as second-class. That was a part of me and I wanted to do something about it. In the 16 years I spent in Parliament, I think it took me about halfway through to work out that Parliament wasn't going to be the answer to those things. In fact, it was the problem. It created those injustices. That was a massive moment of realisation for me.

The big turning point was when I was invited to speak at the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster as Culture Secretary. When I really thought deeply about it, what I realised was that the entire British state had been ignoring an English city crying out for justice for 20 years. It wasn't just by accident. It was deliberate. Having been at the other semi-final match on that day, and having had many friends who were at Hillsborough, I was thrown into crisis by that invitation because I was in a Government that hadn't done anything for the Liverpool supporters and the city of Liverpool. It was a classic case of the establishment not wanting it to be opened up. The Labour Government had a commitment to reopen Hillsborough, but quickly another Whitehall stitch-up took place, and it didn't. Hence I knew what I was walking into that day.

But when I went to Anfield, in many ways, I was taking my first steps out of the Westminster system. Because the only way I could reconcile the kind of position I was in was actually not to do the Westminster thing. If you're going to be true to yourself, you have to walk outside of it, and that's what I did. I walked outside of the collective responsibility in deciding to try and reopen [the issue of justice for] Hillsborough and use what political power I had at the time to do that.

From the outside looking in, people will remember you as having a high-flying career in Westminster, which you seemed to be flourishing in as a minister. But behind the scenes you are saying there was a lot that was having to be accommodated to even be a politician operating in the Westminster system and achieving success in it. Did you feel you had become part of the 'establishment'?

I've always in my life had a degree of imposter syndrome. I went to Cambridge University but I couldn't relate Cambridge to where I had grown up. You would hear these people holding forth and it took me a year to work out they were talking complete rubbish, but it looks so convincing. I had it too when I went into Parliament. And I had it a bit again when I was in government.

I was always, in a sense, having to prove myself and become part of the 'in crowd'. But the experience of being in Westminster, as the years rolled, meant I knew I wasn't fully in the 'in crowd', particularly when that invite came to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster - it kind of made me choose. Was I going to be true to myself and what I knew to be the facts about Hillsborough, or was I going to play the Westminster game?

The interesting thing about the British political system is that it makes you choose. It doesn't let you be both yourself and operating at a high level within the system.

In which specific ways does the Westminster system mean that politicians can't be the...

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It was as I was reading the horrifying details of the Afghan data leak that I got the alert. 'BBC BREAKING NEWS: Thousands of Afghans relocated to UK under secret government scheme after defence data breach'.

In a second, the BBC had taken a story about the UK endangering tens of thousands of Afghans - many of whom had worked for the British army - and made it a story about migrants breaching our borders. They had taken a story about the Government covering up its own mistake, and spun it into a woke refugee resettlement conspiracy!

So look. My uni history thesis re-examined accounts of colonial wars fought hundreds of years ago. I used local diaries to fact-check histories written by Western academics. But I shouldn't have wasted my time crawling through archives - I could have run the same study on this week's headlines. The racist and colonialist rewriting of warfare is still alive and well. Which brings us to today's Media Storm: war reporting.

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CNN's chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, had to be corrected live on air by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart when she said: "Our major problem covering Israel-Gaza is that… journalists are not on the ground in Gaza."

She had meant to condemn Israel's ban on international journalists - instead, she condemned herself. There are, of course, journalists on the ground in Gaza, and more of them have been murdered than in any other war on record.

The far more accurate diagnosis of the problem came from one of them, Hossam Shabat: "The problem is not Western journalists being unable to enter, but the fact that Western media doesn't respect and value Palestinian journalists."

Local reporters are often overlooked (even without a strategised campaign to smear them all as Hamas operatives), but the hidden hierarchies of war reporting run deeper.

I first heard the term 'fixer' during my journalism Masters. Yet I had met a fixer before, while working in the refugee camps on France's UK-facing coast. He was an Afghan man and had worked for British journalists covering their army's invasion of his country.

When he became targeted by the Taliban as a "collaborator for the enemy", he fled. The fixer told me this story after arriving in Dunkirk in the middle of that harsh 2017 winter, and I added his name to my 'try find him a tent' list.

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We were short of supplies a year after the demolition of the 'Jungle' camp (just another failed attempt to erase 'the refugee problem' from our shores). I nicknamed the remaining wasteland 'the elephant on the doorstep'. People who had helped Britain were ignored.

When I later learned the term 'fixer', our lecturer explained that fixers are local experts who aid foreign journalists. They may find people to interview, earn their trust, or gain access to exclusive spaces. I remember thinking, isn't that what we call 'reporting'? It certainly is when Brits are doing it.

I have wanted to do this week's Media Storm episode since we started the podcast four years and six series ago. The episode is about war reporters - those larger-than-life heroes who make gritty, complex, epic roles for A-listers like Rosamund Pike to win Oscars with - and fixers, their invisible enablers, who take on more of the risk for none of the recognition.

"We have many cases where fixers were either kidnapped or killed for their work," Abee...

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While Donald Trump's second term has been anything but smooth sailing for Ukraine, it has not yet proved the unmitigated disaster many in Europe and Kyiv had been bracing themselves for.

So far, the reality on the ground has been a much more complicated saga, but one that reveals a great deal about the pitfalls of the America-first philosophy as it engages with actors outside the United States.

Despite returning to the White House promising swift peace in Ukraine, Trump has instead faced a revealing test of power and personality, and a complicated game of transactional geopolitics.

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For the better part of a decade, the prevailing assumption about Trump's foreign policy instincts could be condensed into a single word: Putin.

Since he first announced his intention to run for the presidency, Trump has exhibited a peculiar soft spot for the strongman in Moscow. He has consistently praised Putin's "strength", waxed lyrical about the symbiotic nature of their relationship, and repeatedly shrugged off accusations of election interference, routinely taking the Russian president's word over the consensus of his own combined intelligence agencies.

The idea that Trump is indeed a Russian asset, if at least an unwitting one, is not altogether without merit. For much of his second term, his administration's policies have afforded Russia breathing space to escalate its war on Ukraine.

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The events of recent months, however, have complicated the picture. Trump's actions over the last few weeks have put paid to the notion that he is Putin's willing accomplice. If he is a puppet, he is now proving to be rather an uncooperative one.

The Art of the No-Deal

In essence, Trump's relationship with Ukraine is not about values or even partnerships. It's about leverage. That's the through-line of his foreign policy: pursuit of the deal, contempt for diplomatic tradition, and a ruthless pragmatism where morality is secondary to results. Since returning to the office, he has sought to do what he believes he does best: strike a deal.

At the beginning of the year, he initiated talks with Putin almost immediately, believing that the fastest route to resolution would be found in offering Russia what it wanted most - a Ukrainian government willing to make concessions.

In Trump's world, it's a strategy that makes a great deal of sense. If getting a deal, not doing the right thing, is the ultimate goal, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, leading the smaller country with the smaller military, battered, bruised, and facing severe ammunition and manpower shortages, would be the natural party to lean on. This is where the cracks in Trump's approach to geopolitics begin to show.

Zelenskyy, showing willingness to make accommodations for Trump's victory plan, bent but would not break. The scale of Trump's frustration with Zelenskyy's refusal to roll over was clear for all to see when in February a now infamous press event in the Oval Office devolved into a shouting match in front of the world's media with Trump and Vice President JD Vance doing most, if not all, of the shouting.

"You're either going to make a deal or we're out," Trump blustered, before promptly dismissing Zelenskyy from the White House. "If we're out, you'll fight it out. I don't think it will be pretty."

He estimated, err...

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Keir Starmer's regret at talking of an "island of strangers" was widely seen as a defeat for the newly resurgent 'Blue Labour' faction - even if his Government's white paper still claimed that immigration has caused "incalculable damage".

But the partial retreat leaves fundamental questions unanswered. What should Labour's relationship be with white working-class voters? And, as political divides open around diversity, how can we all live together?

The answers lie in a 'multicultural nationalism' that creates explicit space for white working-class experiences, views, and aspirations within a cohesive diverse nation.

Fifteen years ago, Blue Labour was a radical communitarian grouping saying little about immigration. Indeed, it was partially defined by its support for the community-based living wage campaign of the hyper-diverse Citizens UK.

In its recent reinvention, Blue Labour posits that Labour should mirror Reform UK's appeal to immigration-sceptical and socially-conservative white and predominantly working-class voters.

The Identity Trap: Race, Representation and the Rise of Conservative Diversity

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Starmer is perhaps now realising that this approach won't undermine Nigel Farage's offer of 'the real thing' but may send more liberal supporters towards the Liberal Democrats or Greens.

But Labour cannot turn its back on white working-class voters.

Many Reform supporters have never voted for Labour and never would. But crucial voters do choose between the two, and they won't vote for a Labour Party that only caters for its liberal wing.

Treating large numbers of voters as though they deserve no place or voice in society will simply stoke the social tensions we saw last summer.

Multiculturalism developed in the late 20th Century to accommodate ethnic minority and faith communities within a wider white-majority Britain. After the turn of the century, it was blamed for encouraging 'Muslim separatism' and enabling violent political terrorism.

Critics ignored the similar problems in European nations that had never embraced multiculturalism, and the evidence that the UK was one of Europe's more cohesive countries. Officially abandoned as a state philosophy by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, multiculturalism remains the way that much of the public sector, private business, and liberal opinion thinks about a diverse society.

But a multiculturalism that is only supported by social liberals cannot create a cohesive nation. That must, by definition, include the socially-conservative.

Multiculturalism did give less attention to what can bind us together, and it can feel as though it was only difference that matters - not what we hold in common.

Increased diversity has also changed the UK, and England in particular. White people are far less likely to experience overt or subtle racism, but it no longer makes sense to talk of a single 'white majority' that stands apart from or above minorities.

Many larger urban areas of England have no white majority or soon will not. 'Mixed-race' is the fastest growing census category. When Conservative and Reform leaders, like self-proclaimed 'British Muslim patriot' Zia Yusuf, are ethnic minorities it is clear that membership of powerful institutions is no longer entirely restricted by race.

This is My England, and Yours: Reclaiming Englishness

Now that English Nationalism has been unleashed, Peter Jukes argues that we must all try to restore England's buried civic tolerance and historic diversity.

Peter Jukes

At the same time, the disadvantages of economic d...

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Drummers banging out Bhangra beats. Blue-shirted, brown-skinned fans cheering and chanting, dancing and singing, from opening bell to stumps. India's tricolour waved in all corners of the ground. Sweltering heat and humidity with the occasional driving downpour. If it wasn't for the £5 samosas and Brummie burrs you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in Eden Gardens rather than Edgbaston. This is England 2025 in the week in which Lord Tebbit died - and proof that his infamous 'cricket test' turned to ashes long ago.

It was 35 years ago that the then Norman Tebbit, former Conservative Cabinet minister and Margaret Thatcher's rottweiler, came up with his infamous 'dog whistle' - so long ago that 20 of the 22 players in the second Test weren't even born - and it hasn't stood the test of time.

In 1990, ahead of a previous India tour of England, he said that people from ethnic minorities in Britain couldn't be truly British unless they supported the England cricket team, telling the Los Angeles Times: "A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?"

More recently, he doubled-down on his 'test' - taking it into the realms of the absurd - asking an Asian BBC reporter during the 2019 cricket World Cup, which was being held in England, "were we to find ourselves in a war, which side would you support?", adding that "it makes you a bit less British" if a person supports another country.

Tebbit appeared to have conveniently forgotten the 2.5 million Indians who did fight for the King and Empire in the Second World War and the 1.5 million in the first - the biggest volunteer armies in history, with hundreds of thousands of them dying for the cause.

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Fast forward to the present day and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone of Indian heritage supporting England in the current series.

Whatever Tebbit had hoped to achieve all those years ago, to pressure or shame or force ethnic minorities into supporting England or tone down their backing for their mother land, has failed spectacularly. They still cheer for who they want, just as Brits who moved and live abroad, and their children - like the millions in the EU - haven't changed who they support at, say, football. But then, they're ex-pats, not immigrants. Different terms, different rules.

Speaking of football, one might also wonder why Tebbit didn't choose that sport as the barometer of loyalty. It wouldn't quite fit the narrative he was looking to push, given that most of us who support India at cricket cheer for England when it comes to football - watching them in finals, suffering the pain of penalties first-hand, with a side order of violence and racism to complete the experience.

Moreover, the 'lack-of-loyalty' trope is further undermined if one actually talks to ethnic minorities and asks them how they feel. Research by British Future - a think tank specialising in attitudes to immigration, integration, and identity - found that three-quarters of ethnic minority respondents in England felt a "strong sense of belonging" to England, while a third felt "equally British and English" when asked about how they felt about their British and English identities.

Tebbit may also have pondered why it is that so many people of Asian and Caribbean origin are in the UK. To paraphrase that immortal line of his: we're here because our fathers didn't riot, t...

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Democracy campaigners have, on the whole, enthusiastically welcomed the Government's political reforms outlined in a major new election strategy today.

As has been widely-reported, 16 and 17-year-olds will be given the right to vote in all UK elections, bringing UK-wide elections in line with Scotland and Wales.

It represents the biggest change to UK democracy in a generation and delivers a key manifesto commitment of the Labour Party.

Long-called for reforms to voter ID rules will also allow UK-issued bank cards to be accepted as valid voter ID at polling stations, to help more people exercise their democratic right.

And, in what is likely to become even more important, digital versions of accepted IDs (like digital driving licences) will be permitted when they become available. Having ID on your phone should mostly eliminate - eventually - the problem of leaving one's identification at home.

A new digital Voter Authority Certificate will also be created for those who don't have any of the permitted IDs. Without abolishing voter ID altogether, these changes remedy many of the problems that voter ID creates: mass disenfranchisement for those who lack it.

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We'll also see an increasingly automated voter registration system to make it easier for people to register to vote. There are currently an estimated eight million people missing from the electoral roll, and the problem is particularly bad for renters, young people, and those from lower-income groups. Letting people register to vote when they engage with Government services - like benefits, the DVLA or the Passport Office is likely to be a welcome first step.

But it's the measures on political funding which mostly catch anti-corruption campaigners' eyes - and us here at Byline Times.

Amid fears of foreign funding of our political parties, the Government has pledged to close loopholes that allow foreign donors to influence UK political parties through 'shell companies' - in other words, registered firms which exist solely to pump money into our politics.

Unincorporated Associations are loose groupings like political dining clubs, which have traditionally been able to funnel huge sums into our parties without saying which individuals are stumping up the cash. They will face new requirements with mandatory checks on donations over £500.

As the election strategy makes clear, Unincorporated Associations (UAs) don't currently need to disclose the source of their funding for donations under £37,270 a year. That makes them a potential route for "foreign or otherwise illegitimate money to enter electoral campaigns," as the Electoral Commission and almost every anti-corruption group has been shouting for years.

There is therefore a move towards a 'Know Your Donor' policy, making clear the onus on parties to check donors are eligible, and to lower this (bizarrely high) threshold for UAs to disclose their funders. UAs will be required to "undertake checks on donations with a value of over £500, similar to the checks on donations undertaken by political parties."

The Electoral Commission will be able to impose heavier fines of up to £500,000 on those who breach political finance rules (a massive jump up from the current £20,000 max fine, seen as the 'cost of doing business' for dodgy donors). As the policy doc makes clear, £20k is less than 0.5% of what many political parties (including the Tories and Labour) spent in the 2019 election. Previously you could fail to declare a multi-million pound, rule-breaking suitcase of cash and get barely a slap on the wrist.

E...

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When the Scottish Parliament introduced votes at 16 for the 2014 independence referendum, there were those who argued that 16 and 17-year-olds weren't mature enough to think seriously about the world. Some Conservatives complained that this was a partisan move, designed to drive-up support for the 'Yes' side.

But during the referendum debate, everyone in Scottish politics witnessed the profound way that older teenagers engaged, taking the subject seriously and coming to their own conclusions.

High schools and colleges hosted debates, and the politicians who attended, on both sides, often reported back that they had been involved in some of the most rigorous grillings they'd had.

A year later, when the Scottish Government proposed that the voting age for Holyrood and local elections here should be permanently reduced to 16, the vote passed unanimously - even the previously sceptical Conservatives accepting that the experience had proved them wrong.

Wales followed a few years later, and, in the 2021 Senedd elections, 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote for the first time. The fact that it's taken England and Northern Ireland - and so Westminster elections across the UK - so long to catch up is a shame. The fact that the Government has finally done so is excellent news.

The principled case for lowering the voting age is obvious - 16 and 17-year-olds have a stake in society, and should get to shape it. Since, on average, they will live longer than the rest of us, they arguably have more of a stake. It's often said that they can pay taxes and join the army, and, of course, that's true, but even those who don't do either are part of the community.

Those who worry that they don't have enough experience of the world miss the point, too. Democracy doesn't demand that we are experts in anything but our own experience - it functions by pooling our collective perspectives.

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Every 16-year-old is more of an expert in what it's like to be 16 in Britain today than I am. And that's the only qualification they need. Forcing politicians to ask for votes from those currently in the school and college system, or the care system, is a good thing. Arguably, it's helped increase the prominence of education and care in Scottish political debate.

Academics who have studied voting habits in Scotland since the change didn't just find that older teenagers are perfectly well equipped to engage in the political process, they've also discovered that those given the right to vote at 16 continue to be more likely to vote than the cohort before them were at the equivalent life stages.

Voting is a habit you either get into or don't. If you form that habit when you're likely still living at home and, often, going to school or college, you will take it with you into the world. If you acquire the right to vote at exactly the moment when you (in many cases) leave home and life becomes precarious, you are less likely to get into the habit, and less likely to ever get around to forming it.

Of course, there's a question about why not to go further - York University professor Martin O'Neill has argued (convincingly, I think) that it should be cut to 12. Cambridge don David Runciman stumps for six. But that's an argument for another day.

Because age is only one way that we exclude people from voting in Westminster elections. Alongside older teenagers, there are two other large groups of adults in the UK who we currently disenfranchise.

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A group claiming to be an independent grassroots critic of Britain's Equality Act is actually being bankrolled by a charity spun out of Tufton Street's right-wing Centre for Policy Studies think tank, Byline Times can reveal.

Don't Divide Us (DDU) claims to be a "grassroots movement" composed of "all sorts of people who first came together in the summer of 2020 to contest the idea that Britain is systematically racist", while suggesting that it campaigns against a "racialised approach being rolled out across our institutions, and schools in particular".

On its 'beliefs' page, Don't Divide Us calls itself "the UK's Common-Sense Voice on Race", and claims "Today's so-called anti-racism sees group identity before it sees a person and risks reinforcing prejudice by dividing us into a world of victims and oppressors".

It has been cited in over half a dozen news articles throughout the last year, and many more times during 2023 and 2024, including appearances in leading newspapers such as The Times and Telegraph, as well as in the Spectator and Spiked Online.

The group has come out against pro Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures in workplaces, and has targeted schools for teaching about systemic racism, often landing favourable coverage in the right wing press.

Until now, no funding to this "grassroots" organisation has been revealed, but this outlet found that a recent cash injection has come from a charitable vehicle spun out of the Conservative Party-linked Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) as a means of attracting anonymous donations.

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Funding Revealed

The most recent accounts filed by the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) - a registered charity - show a £20,000 donation for the year ending 2024 went to Don't Divide Us.

Companies House documents for 'Don't Divide Us Group Ltd' list its net assets for the year as £21,789. The only employee is director Alka Cuthbert, a contributor to Spiked Online and former Brexit Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Eastham.

The accounts for the Institute for Policy Research also reveal the names of some of the papers it has funded over the last 12 months, including one titled 'The Equality Act - Is It Fit for Purpose or Time for an Overhaul?'.

In June 2025, Don't Divide Us released a paper titled 'The Equality Act Isn't Working', which was the report later cited in the right wing press. In it, DDU argues that the Act isn't "fit for purpose", has led to an increase in race-based discrimination claims, and is creating issues in the workplace, ultimately calling for the subjective element to be stripped from equality law tests. Ultimately the report calls for the "eventual repeal" of all protected characteristics under the EA.

Neither DDU nor the IPR confirmed whether this was the same paper or not, or who was ultimately behind the research donation.

The IPR is a longstanding funding vehicle for several Tufton think tanks. Money is donated from the charitable trusts and foundations of Tufton's backers, and is then distributed anonymously back out to a host of different organisations, almost all of which don't declare who funds them. As such, the true source of the DDU donation is still kept hidden.

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What is known is that the IPR received £357,239 in 2024, and spent over £300,000 donating to 'research projects, conferences, seminars, and publications' delivered by the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, Politeia, the Taxpayers Alliance, and Don't Divide Us. These are almost entirely organisations viewed as ...

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Two serving members of the House of Lords are under fire for serving on Hong Kong's top court - despite China imposing ever-tightening control over the province.

House of Lords members David Neuberger and Leonard Hoffmann - both former senior British judges and now crossbench peers - serve as foreign judges on Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal, despite growing calls for them to stand down as the region rounds up democracy activists and journalists.

Judges there must swear allegiance to Hong Kong, which was previously a largely-autonomous zone of China following its handover from the Brits in 1997.

Now, however, Beijing is exerting enormous influence over governance there - not least through the draconian National Security Law passed five years ago this June.

It means that the two still-serving British peers on the court swear allegiance both to the British Crown as Lords, and to an area under the grip of the Chinese Communist Party.

Last August, Lord Neuberger stood down as chair of a legal advisory board to an international media freedom coalition he founded, after he sat on the court panel which unanimously dismissed a bid by British Hong Konger Jimmy Lai and six other pro-democracy activists to overturn their convictions for taking part in a peaceful protest in August 2019. However, he and Lord Hoffman still serve on that same panel - and remain voting members of the House of Lords.

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Dual Allegiance

A May 2024 report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation highlighted that the Chinese authorities on the mainland have the power to "interpret" the Basic Law and National Security Law, allowing it to overturn supposedly "final" decisions of the Court of Final Appeal.

"Beijing has repeatedly used this power to interfere with court rulings. Additionally, the Beijing-appointed Chief Executive has authority over judicial appointments and promotions, a power that has been used to ensure that the Courts reward those who support the regime and sideline those who do not," the campaign group points out.

When approached by Byline Times, Lord Neuberger denied there is a conflict between his dual allegiances, and doesn't believe he needs to register under Britain's new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which is designed to track agents of foreign influence.

But the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation says conflicts of interest are "not hypothetical", as China and Hong Kong are often discussed in the House of Lords. In November 2022, the Lords debated the question of "what assessment His Majesty's Government have made of allegations of human rights abuses in China."

"The debate repeatedly invoked the ongoing human rights abuses in Hong Kong - some of which the Lords who are Overseas [judges] had directly participated in," the foundation argues.

They argue these judges provide a veneer of international legitimacy for Beijing's tightening control over Hong Kong.

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House of Lords rules permit members to work for foreign states - and merely require them to disclose that work and income. They are not told to share what cases they rule on, and nor is their salary published by the Lords authorities.

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHKF), in its report last year, claimed that Lord Hoffmann was "instrumental" in reinstating the conviction of a man "only accused of filming...

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In an era where British Muslims face rising levels of hostility - from hate crime in the streets to institutional discrimination - one might expect that a Government working group tasked with producing a definition of Islamophobia or 'anti-Muslim hate,' might be a good-faith effort.

Unfortunately, the recent call for evidence by the UK Government's working group on an Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hatred definition has left activists disappointed, and with the impression that it is not a sincere effort.

In fact, the process appears to be little more than a farcical box-ticking exercise, leading to the conclusion that the procedure has been structurally rigged to avoid engagement with the very communities whose rights it claims to serve.

'Reform UK and the Rising Threat to Muslims and Minorities in Britain'

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Dr Sabera Bhayat

Firstly, the process for submitting evidence on how to define Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hate appears to have been designed to avoid actual engagement. Anyone who has submitted evidence to a standard Parliamentary inquiry knows the word count for consultations tends to be around 3,000 words.

It would have made sense for this process to have been the same, for the obvious reason that Islamophobia is a multi-faceted and nuanced sociological and political problem that requires in-depth analysis. Such work requires evidence drawn from the lived experiences of ordinary Muslims, academic literature, case studies, legal precedent and data analysis.

However, the amount of evidence that can be submitted to the working group is constrained by tight limits, in some cases disallowing answers that exceed 70 to 100 characters. To put that into perspective, this is barely more than one tweet's worth of letters.

One cannot even scratch the surface of a problem like Islamophobia, covering legislative gaps, media biases, hate crime trends or workplace discrimination, within such restrictive limits. This does not appear to be an open and sincere invitation to share knowledge; rather, it has the look of a bureaucratic muzzle disguised as a public consultation.

Excluding the Experts

If the format of the inquiry were the only issue, then perhaps the working group may have been able to retain some legitimacy. Unfortunately, there are much deeper and more disturbing problems, which, arguably, completely undermine its efforts.

Reports claim that the working group was prohibited by the Government from engaging with grassroots civil rights Muslim bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

MCB and other Muslim bodies, like Muslim Engagement & Development (MEND), are the very organisations that have been working for years, decades even, to combat Islamophobia across the UK - they are the experts in this field. They have deep ties to, and the trust of, British Muslim communities up and down the country.

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How can the Government expect to be given an accurate understanding of Islamophobia if it is shutting out the very organisations that represent the communities suffering this abuse daily? Again, it would appear that the negation of grassroots, credible Muslim voices has been built into the very structure of this process, with the intention of reaching a predetermined outcome as to how prejudice against Muslims should be defined.

However, concern around how this has all been managed should turn into consternation and alarm when considering who actually has been consulted. Investigations allege that the Government's w...