We must never allow this government to divide us with their ‘culture wars’

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‘A new report by an Education Select Committee essentially blames the fight for racial equality for the lack of achievement by white working class children’ (Getty Images)

A new report by an Education Select Committee essentially blames the fight for racial equality for the lack of achievement by white working-class children. The report doesn’t blame a decade of cuts in education, much less the near half-century of devastation visited on working-class communities by Thatcherite free-market dogma.

The Tories love white working-class children so much they tried to deny them free school meals three times last year and only backed down because Marcus Rashford fought for all poor children to be fed. Earlier this year, the government-sponsored Sewell Report made the ludicrous claim that institutional racism did not exist in the UK. Last week, the home secretary, Priti Patel, defended the “right” of people to jeer football players who “take the knee” in solidarity with the anti-racist movement. And at the weekend, Tory peer Dido Harding announced she would ensure there were fewer “foreign” doctors and nurses in the NHS should her bid to lead it be successful.

The Tories are trying to deflect public anger over their failure to deal with the coronavirus epidemic by promoting and endorsing racism. If the working class – which is a social category and not an ethnicity – allow ourselves to be divided, the only beneficiaries will be the privately educated bigots who rule us.