Quite right!: Munira Mirza | part one
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Michael is joined by Munira Mirza. Raised in Oldham and educated at Oxford, Munira worked at Policy Exchange before serving as Deputy Mayor of London under Boris Johnson and later as Director of the No.10 Policy Unit, where she helped shape the Conservatives’ 2019 election manifesto. She now leads Civic Future and the think tank Fix Britain.
In the first of this two-part interview, Munira reflects on Labour’s vulnerability in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, and the ‘serious threat’ it faces if the Muslim votes flees to the Greens. She discusses the politicisation of religious identity, the influence of Islamism in Britain, and what she sees as a failure of public authorities to confront hard truths.
They also discuss the news this week that Valdo Calocane – the man who killed three people in Nottingham in 2023 – was released from hospital in 2020 because health professionals were concerned about the disproportionate number of black men who were being detained in the mental health system. Munira argues that fear of being accused of institutional racism has distorted decision-making, a scandal of potentially greater magnitude than the grooming gangs and with serious consequences for public safety.
Finally, she revisits Brexit and the 2019 realignment, defending the decision to leave the EU and arguing that levelling up was an attempt to fix a broken economic model built on high immigration and weak productivity.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Madeline Grant, host of Quite Right alongside Michael Gove. |
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| 0:25.4 | It really helps us out. |
| 0:26.9 | Happy listening. |
| 0:33.7 | Hello and welcome to Quite Right. |
| 0:36.8 | This week, Maddie is away and I'll be talking to Minira Mirza. |
| 0:41.7 | Minira has been at the heart of some of the most consequential decisions in British politics, a graduate of Oxford University, having been brought up in Oldham. |
| 0:50.4 | Minera worked at Policy Exchange, a think which I helped set up, and Manira was central there to the debate on what made a successful multi-ethnic, multicultural society. |
| 1:01.7 | She then graduated to work for Boris Johnson when Boris was mayor of London, and Manira was deputy mayor in charge of arts, education and culture. |
| 1:11.6 | Minira then went on to work for Boris in number 10 as head of the policy unit. |
| 1:16.6 | She was the author and architect of the 2019 election manifesto, |
| 1:20.7 | which secured a landslide victory for the Conservatives. |
| 1:24.5 | And she was there at the heart of the Boris Johnson government until |
| 1:28.2 | resigning before Boris himself stood down. Minera has seen the system from the inside, |
| 1:34.9 | knows what's gone wrong, and is determined to fix it. |
| 1:41.9 | In our two-parts discussion, we'll be discussing, first of all, some of the issues around multiculturalism, which Maniur first began to study more than 20 years ago, questions of racism, discrimination, Islamism, the extent to which Britain, particularly as we contemplate the results of the Gorton and Denton by-election, is a country |
| 2:02.8 | divided. And in the second part of our discussion, we'll be discussing leadership. What are the |
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