No one can be shocked by Nusrat Ghani’s allegations when anti-Muslim prejudice is met with such little consequence
The past few weeks have been a time of discovery for the Conservative party and its supporters. Some Tories as senior as the prime minister himself learned that work events they attended may have, in fact, been boozy parties. Others found out that a man known to be a liar may have, in fact, lied. And now it appears there might be a spot of trouble with Islamophobia. As with “partygate”, the people concerned are appalled by the allegations, are demanding investigations, are asking us to respect the process, and are generally pleading ignorance. Of course, the ignorance in this context is not theirs but ours. For if news of the partying and the alleged discrimination were not leaked to the press, then none of it would really have happened. Just trees falling in silent forests.
The allegation comes from the Tory MP Nusrat Ghani, who says that when she was sacked as a junior transport minister in a reshuffle in 2020, party whips told her that her “Muslim woman minister status was making colleagues feel uncomfortable”. The first time this tree fell, Johnson not only heard it, but was informed by Ghani personally. She wrote on Twitter that the prime minister said that “he could not get involved and suggested I use the internal Conservative party complaints process. This, as I had already pointed out, was very clearly not appropriate for something that happened on government business.”
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
