Former senior Scotland Yard detective Neil Basu has warned that Britain is becoming a two-tier society in which non-white individuals are favoured over white working-class people, as he accused public institutions of prioritising diversity and inclusion at the expense of fairness.
Speaking on GB News, Mr Basu – who served as Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police and led counter-terrorism operations before retiring in 2022 – said ordinary people felt they had been told to “keep their mouth shut” and that the authorities wanted the issue to “go away”. He argued that decades of diversity policies and race action plans had created a system in which “if you’re white and particularly white and working class, you’re just disadvantaged”.
Diversity Plans Under Scrutiny
Mr Basu, who is of mixed race – with an Indian father and a Welsh mother – and has described having “54 years of lived experience of racism”, has long been a vocal advocate for greater diversity within policing. He received the Queen’s Police Medal in 2016 and in May 2022 publicly stated that “British policing is institutionally racist”, urging police chiefs to admit it, saying “we are guilty as charged”. He changed his earlier view on the matter after discussions with minority ethnic police staff following the murder of George Floyd.
Yet despite his advocacy, Mr Basu has been sharply critical of the Police Race Action Plan, the joint initiative between the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing intended to create an anti-racist culture and improve trust among Black communities. In September 2024 he described the plan as “utterly ineffective and utterly ignored” and “still rubbish”, noting it had already had three leaders since its launch in 2022. The National Black Police Association (NBPA) has also withdrawn its support for the plan, citing a lack of progress, with some forces showing no interest in anti-racism efforts.
Mr Basu has suggested that “positive discrimination” may be necessary in the rest of the UK in time-limited circumstances to increase the number of minority ethnic officers, though he acknowledged that “no one I know with protected characteristics wants positive discrimination”. The distinction between “positive action” and “positive discrimination” has already proved legally contentious. A review into Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DEI) at Thames Valley Police highlighted a case in which a “Positive Action Progression Programme” was deemed by a tribunal to constitute positive discrimination, resulting in a loss for the force.
Critics of the current approach point to recent reviews that have uncovered significant failings in the Metropolitan Police’s recruitment and vetting processes, which they attribute partly to DEI priorities. These include instances in which rejected applicants were reconsidered on DEI grounds and the hiring of individuals with serious criminal convictions, including a rapist. Commentators argue that an overemphasis on “identity” over “abilities and character” has compromised public safety, with some using terms such as “woke rot” and “political correctness” to describe what they see as a decline in standards.
Perceived Bias in Incident Response
Mr Basu’s most detailed warning concerned the way police and other authorities approach incidents. He claimed that “if the police turn up to an incident or anybody else turns up immediately, the white person is the bad, the non-white person is the goody, and this is not the way it should be.” This assertion has become a focal point in a wider debate about so-called “two-tier policing” in the UK, in which critics allege that diversity policies have led to a presumption of guilt or innocence based on race.
The case of Henry Nowak has emerged as a central reference point in this debate. Critics argue it exposes a police culture overly influenced by DEI and anti-racism policies, with Conservative MP Esther McVey strongly condemning the handling of the case and stating that DEI and critical theories have negatively affected institutions. Mr Basu’s comments align with a growing political discourse in which the term “white British” has become contentious, with some arguing it is used to create a narrative of victimhood that fosters a perception of a two-tier society, while others maintain that such claims overlook broader issues of integration and contribution.
The concept of a two-tier society has historical precedents, having been discussed in contexts ranging from economic disparities and urban decline to the Eurozone crisis. But the current iteration focuses squarely on the unintended consequences of diversity and inclusion initiatives across public services. Mr Basu, who expressed disappointment that his fellow police chiefs did not agree with his stance on institutional racism – a disagreement he believes hastened his retirement – warned that the policies implemented over recent years had “shone a light on the appalling consequences of what they’ve done to this nation”.
