Does the Conservative Party have an Islamophobia problem?

The Tory leadership merry-go-round has been blamed for the party’s failure to take swift action on Islamophobia, explains Tom Peck

Baroness Warsi has been claiming for several years that the party has an issue with Islamophobia (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

A new review into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party has blamed “turmoil” within the party for its slowness in cracking down on the issue. Professor Swaran Singh – who was first commissioned by the party to investigate the problem back in 2019, and reported in 2021 – has renewed his criticism, saying the Tories are taking “for ever” to take meaningful action.

How did this come about?

In the Conservative leadership election of 2019, Sajid Javid promised on live television to commission an “independent review” into Islamophobia within the party, and forced all the other candidates to agree to do the same. Boris Johnson won that contest, but was extremely slow to act on his promise, not least as he had made highly Islamophobic comments of his own earlier that year, in a Daily Telegraph column comparing Muslim women wearing face-coverings to “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”.