How did the Tories get taking the knee so wrong?

Steve Baker’s warning to his colleagues about the way they respond to footballers taking the knee has shaken like a snow globe the debate about the Conservative party and racism. Sir Keir Starmer chose to focus on the matter at Prime Minister’s Questions, mentioning Baker’s message to fellow Tory MPs. That message said: ‘Much as we can’t be associated with calls to defund the police, we urgently need to challenge our own attitude to people taking a knee. I fear we are in danger of misrepresenting our own heart for those who suffer injustice.’
Baker has put his finger on a problem that his party has. It was perhaps one thing for Tory MPs to be uncomfortable about the genesis of the gesture of taking the knee, given it comes from the US where racism is manifestly different to that in the UK (this is different to saying that the UK doesn’t have a problem with racism, by the way), or indeed to be worried about some of the demands of organisations linked to taking the knee.