SHE is one of Boris Johnson’s closest advisors, having come with him from his time as mayor of London and into Number 10 as head of its policy unit, and been cited by him as one of his foremost female influences.
The late autumn/early winter bust-up between the prime minister and his closest advisor, Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, his director of communications, saw Munira Mirza unscathed. How?
Her husband, Dougie Smith, landed a job as a strategist and opposition researcher in Johnson’s political office in March. It’s thought that he came in off the back of Cummings’ very public call to fill Whitehall with ‘misfits’ and ‘weirdos’ – and while it was directed mainly at the Civil Service, there is little doubt that within the government itself, mavericks and rebels would get a fair hearing.
And indeed, Smith has what might be put in tabloid speak, ‘a colourful past’ – though he has never sought to publicly distance himself from his role as a co-founder of Fever Parties – which reportedly as the popular press has described it, organised socials for beautiful, wellheeled hedonists. Unlike Cummings, he had worked for the party previously.
Mirza’s name has hardly surfaced at all as various camps were delineated by the press in ensuing brouhaha – perhaps, her role as a policy wonk is far enough removed from the machinations of briefings and press manoeuvrings for it not to be a thing. What did catch the press’ attention in June last year though – following the Black Lives Matter movement – was her appointment to set up the commission on race and ethnic disparities to advise the government.
A chorus of disapproval met that announcement. She was no ally to the idea of structural racism and indeed, had pretty much dismissed the idea.
Labour MP DavidLammy said at the time of her appointment that it had no credibility and reflected what he felt to be the government’s mostly lackadaisical, apathetic, and disinterested stance towards racial inequality – structural or not.
He cited her reaction to his own inquiry into racial disparities in the justice system as indicative of the way Number 10 really thought about race.
He said “she went out of her way” to slam it and accused her of waging a culture war. Lammy has concluded many of the problems faced by minorities in our criminal justice system were the result of structural or institutional racism – but some are having none of that, saying it is just a stick to beat anyone who doesn’t sign up to a left-wing agenda.
There is little doubt Mirza has strong credentials as a thinker and cultural strategist – she was deputy mayor for culture and director of arts, culture and the creative industries in Johnson’s London Mayoral administration (2008- 2016), but both were relatively content to let London do its thing, and support the arts sector in general, and perhaps, even arguably, apolitically.
Many describe her stint as efficient and diligent and at London mayoral socials, she was affable and approachable, if a little reserved, quietly smiling, nursing a wine glass.
In 2016, Mirza declared herself for Brexit – this was something of an outlier position in London. She even described it as being the new gay – shunned and ostracised by polite society. While that particular argument has come and gone, the more general culture war often generated (and invigorated) by it, hasn’t.
Many commentaries cite her one-time support and active campaigning for the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) as a young woman. She was an Oxford graduate from a workingclass northern background. She grew up in Oldham, attended local schools – her father was a factory worker and her mother taught Urdu part time, according to reports.
Her early career was in museums and the arts, and she was an effective polemicist as her politics underwent a transformation – from uncompromising notions of the state controlling everything to the state doing very little – or as little as possible (because there isn’t much governments actually do well).
The politics of individual freedom was writ large and you can see why Johnson was captivated by it (at least pre-pandemic and lockdown). And it is in this guise that Mirza has probably proved most effective. Inside Number 10, she plays a more pivotal, intellectual, steadying role – someone who can put the flesh on the bones of what Johnson, or a politician like him, instinctively think. Johnson once said she was among the five women who had inspired him alongside Boudicca, his granny, Malala Yousafzai, and Kate Bush.
Some of her old comrades from the RCP are prominent in the politics of the Right and the website, Spiked. Most feel they have an affinity for what might be termed in old political terms, the working class. And that part of it that detests hand-outs, isn’t obviously racist or predictably anti-immigration, but is like an older type of Conservatism, patriotic and believes more in family, than the State.
Johnson obviously could never pass himself off as working class, but Mirza and others clearly can, and this alliance between the establishment and right-wing working class outriders is a platform on which Brexit was built.
Mirza’s own quirky intellectual journey had brought her to the attention of a new group of Conservatives, who knew turning the tide on New Labour and Blair might be a long-term project. In 2002, The Policy Exchange was formed – among its prominent founders was a certain Michael Gove and Nick Boles (its first chief). Gove sits in the cabinet and is chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster since 2019 and minister for the Cabinet Office since 2020.
Boles was among the first – if not the first – openly gay candidate ever fielded by the Conservative Party in an election in 2005 and had recruited Mirza to the think-tank, saying he was “fascinated” and “intrigued” by her.
Mirza was development director and continued her exploration of the connection between art, culture, politics and policy there in the early part of her professional life. She has authored two books, The Politics of Culture (2012) and Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism (2007).
Little has been heard about the commission to investigate racial disparities since the summer of last year and – at the time of going to press. The Libertarian wing of the Conservative Party has not been well served by recent events (lockdowns and restrictions), and while its ideas and impulses appear to have been abandoned or parked – with thinkers such as Mirza, its influence may still come to tell us more about the true direction of Johnson’s premiership.
