Home Office director: we should ‘leverage’ George Floyd’s death

These days, it’s not hard to find an example of departmental failure. From procurement problems at the MoD to accounting errors at the Treasury, Whitehall offers a rich mine of failure from which to draw. But of all the great ministries of state, few provide more gems than the Home Office. The mandarins at 2 Marsham Street are always working on some hare-brained scheme that can destroy a Home Secretary’s career. The trouble is, in the words of Richard Wilson, not only does the minister ‘not know who they are, but neither will they.’

So it is with a sense of weariness then that Steerpike brings news of some of the more interesting views being spouted by one of the department’s directors. Back in July 2022 Nurjahan Khatun, the-then deputy director of the UK Health Security Agency, gave an interview to the Dods Diversity and Inclusion website in which she suggested that ethnic minorities should ‘leverage’ the death of George Floyd.