‘Fringe voices have been mainstreamed’ in Conservative Party says Baroness Warsi

Baroness Warsi is a woman of many firsts.

Born to Pakistani immigrants in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire – she rose from humble beginnings as the daughter of a bus driver to become one of Britain’s most high-profile Muslims.

She was appointed to David Cameron’s shadow cabinet, made a life peer in 2007 and three years later she made history by becoming the first Muslim woman in the cabinet as co-chair of the Conservative Party.

She was once the party’s poster child for racial and religious diversity, but now she’s resigned the whip after almost two decades. And she’s written a book – ‘Muslims Don’t Matter’ – saying she is “done with apologising”.

We spoke to her and asked whether she thinks the Conservatives have moved too far to the right.

Baroness Warsi: What’s happened is what was considered to be fringe voices, the kind of voices which David Cameron described as loons, fruitcakes and closet racists, have now become mainstreamed. The kind of people that David would not allow anywhere near the party are now being quoted as mainstream voices by members of the last Conservative cabinet.

Cathy Newman: After you quit, the party disclosed that you were under investigation for posting a picture of yourself on X drinking from a coconut, congratulating Marieha Hussain, who was found not guilty of racially aggravated public order offence for carrying a placard depicting the former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Suella Braverman as coconuts. Why do you think you’re being investigated?

Baroness Warsi: I resigned my whip because I felt it was important that I wanted to make the fact of this complaint public. I think it’s important where such accusations are made. You have the opportunity to openly and fully defend these matters.

Cathy Newman: But do you not think that some of your former Conservative cabinet colleagues, people of colour themselves, would have been offended by you depicting yourself, drinking out of a coconut, applauding someone who posted this placard? I mean, would you have held such a placard?

Baroness Warsi: I think the one thing that I won’t do on this programme is retry the coconut trial, a trial that found a young woman acquitted. They found her not guilty. And if there’s a process in place which is trying to redo that within the Conservative Party, then I will fight that within the process.

Cathy Newman: The former home secretary, James Cleverly, himself a person of colour, said he’s been called a coconut too many times to laugh it off. Do you sympathise with him on that?

Baroness Warsi: I think the former home secretary also laughed off when he was told about one of his colleagues turning up at a party black faced. And he said, well, that was fine, it was just a joke, it was banter. I’m not going to take lessons from my colleagues. I have a long and proud history of fighting racism, long before I came into politics.

Cathy Newman: Would you have been comfortable depicting Suella Braverman, for example, the way that Marieha Hussain did?

Baroness Warsi:  I think with Suella Braverman there’s a much broader issue. It’s not just in relation to the racist rhetoric that she has used in the past, but the way in which she has deliberately targeted and maligned the British Pakistani community, for example, around the issue of grooming gangs, when her own department produced a report to say that what she was saying was not correct.

Cathy Newman: Do you think she gets a bit of a pass? Because she’s a person of colour and she kind of gets away with using some language that other people wouldn’t.

Baroness Warsi: We’re incredibly naive if we think that racism can only come from white people. You only have to look at what’s happening around the world. If you look at, for example, the rise of Hindutva in Modi’s India or the rise of extremist Buddhists in Myanmar.

Cathy Newman: We focused on Suella Braverman. She didn’t get to stand in the leadership contest because she didn’t have the support, but Kemi Badenoch may well be the next Conservative leader. And she’s talked about not all cultures being equally valid and criticised recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. Do you think that’s racist rhetoric?

Baroness Warsi: I honestly think there is a much bigger issue at stake here, and that is, we are fighting for the very society, the kind of society, the kind of Britain we’re going to be. Are we going to be an inclusive liberal society where politicians are responsible and bring communities together? Or are we going to be a society where politicians incite communities with divisive language?

Cathy Newman: But you think Kemi Badenoch is inciting communities?

Baroness Warsi: I’m honestly not going to talk about her. I am at that point when I genuinely say I’m done. I’m done with having to talk about their statements.

Cathy Newman: But she may be the next Conservative leader.

Baroness Warsi: Let’s hope she’s not.

Cathy Newman:  What are the consequences if she is?

Baroness Warsi: Let’s just hope she’s not.

Cathy Newman: Really the backdrop to all of this is the conflict in the Middle East. The new prime minister, Keir Starmer, says that he stands foursquare behind Israel. How do you, as a British Muslim, when you’ve seen more than a thousand people killed in Lebanon in the last two weeks, tens of thousands killed in Gaza? How do you view that statement?

Baroness Warsi: I don’t view the war in Israel and Gaza as a Muslim. I view it first and foremost as an ex-British foreign minister, and I view it as a human rights lawyer, and I view it as somebody who fundamentally believes in international accountability and diplomacy. The issue that we have with British foreign policy in Israel and Palestine is not the policy. It’s a lack of implementation of it. And successive governments, whether they have been Conservative, coalition or Labour, have simply failed to implement what our stated policy is.

Cathy Newman: You mean Palestinian statehood, two-state solution.

Baroness Warsi: If we look at the violence right now, if you look at the violence in Iran, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Israel, in Palestine, these are all symptoms. The violence is the symptoms of occupation. The disease is occupation. And unless we are prepared to implement our stated policy of two states by recognising the second state, by enforcing the ’67 borders, by demanding the dismantling of illegal settlements, until we deal with those root causes, then tragically we will find ourselves here over and over again.