Tory MPs are right to complain about the Runnymede Trust

What’s the problem with the Runnymede Trust? More than a dozen Tory MPs have written to the Charity Commission demanding an investigation into the charity. They claim that the self-described ‘UK’s leading independent race equality think tank’ criticised the recent Downing Street-backed report into race relations ‘in bad faith’. The MPs, including Edward Leigh, Sally-Ann Hart and Imran Ahmad Khan, claim that the Trust was ‘pursuing a political agenda’.

Runnymede has hit back hard. ‘The Trust regrets the recent trend for politicians to forsake dialogue and simply file complaints against charities whose efforts to address and challenge racism they contest,’ the charity said in a statement. ‘Beloved British institutions including the National Trust and Barnardo’s have also fallen foul of this worrying trend’.

Yet while the Trust’s response was furious, it’s hard not to see that the MPs have a point. Even before the Sewell report was published, the charity wasted little time in rubbishing it. More