Downing Street has been holding discussions with Munira Mirza, a longstanding and often controversial aide to Boris Johnson who has repeatedly criticised ideas about structural and institutional racism, it is understood.
Although it is believed that No 10’s contact with Mirza has been limited to a handful of calls at most, and that she is among a range of outside voices Downing Street has spoken to, her involvement in any sort of discussions with the government is likely to spook some Labour MPs.
According to the Times, which first reported on the talks, Mirza has been discussing multiculturalism as part of a wider project on the issue backed by Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
This could particularly unsettle some in Labour given the trenchant views on the issue previously expressed by Mirza, who spent 14 years working with Johnson.
Mirza, who is married to Dougie Smith, another former No 10 adviser and a key figure in Conservative circles, was particularly critical of a report on ethnicity and the justice system written by David Lammy, who was a backbench MP at the time and is now the foreign secretary.
She said the focus on institutional racism in the report, commissioned by David Cameron and expanded under Theresa May, “clouds the reality of what is happening and in the end could lead to worse outcomes for ethnic minorities”.
Mirza also condemned an audit of racial inequalities in public services commissioned by May, saying it showed how “anti-racism is becoming weaponised across the political spectrum”.
Mirza is a former student radical who became a member of the Revolutionary Communist party, contributing to its magazine Living Marxism, before becoming disillusioned by the left. She worked with Johnson throughout his eight years as London mayor, beginning as an adviser on the arts and rising to be his deputy mayor for education and culture.
In Johnson’s Downing Street she held the key role of head of policy but also took a particular interest in issues connected to culture wars and institutional racism.
In 2020 it emerged that Mirza was setting up a government commission on racial inequality, prompting criticism from a series of Labour MPs.
While Mirza was a close defender of Johnson, dismissing as “hysteria” the reaction to his 2018 newspaper column that likened Muslim women in burqas to letter boxes and bank robbers, she resigned from No 10 in 2022 over another of his comments.
Amid a wider fallout in No 10 over Partygate, Mirza used a stinging resignation letter to accuse Johnson of “scurrilous” behaviour when he falsely linked Starmer to the failure to bring the paedophile Jimmy Savile to justice.
