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Downing Street consults former Boris Johnson advisor who said Islamophobia 'exaggerated'

www.middleeasteye.net Downing Street consults former Boris Johnson advisor who said Islamophobia 'exaggerated'

Munira Mirza defended Boris Johnson when he said Muslim women wearing veils looked like 'letter boxes'

Downing Street consults former Boris Johnson advisor who said Islamophobia 'exaggerated'

Downing Street is consulting Boris Johnson's former policy chief, who described institutional racism as a myth and defended the former prime minister likening Muslim women who wear veils to "letterboxes", on multiculturalism.

It comes amid suggestions that Keir Starmer's Labour government could adopt a more right-wing approach to immigration and multiculturalism in response to the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform party.

In 2010, Mirza argued that "the more we seek to measure racism, the more it seems to grow".

She worked closely with Johnson when he was mayor of London, and strongly criticised now-Foreign Secretary David Lammy's review of racism in the criminal justice system, which found widespread racial bias, in 2017. Mirza dismissed institutional racism as a "myth".

In 2018 she publicly defended Johnson after he claimed Muslim women wearing face veils "look like letter boxes".

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