Move comes after hiring of new adviser who said black people have lower average IQs
Boris Johnson and Andrew Sabisky. The PM’s adviser has suggested the use
of ‘enforced contraception’ to avoid the creation of a ‘permanent
underclass’.
Composite: EPA/BBC
Boris Johnson’s spokesman has refused to say whether the prime
minister thinks black people have lower IQs on average, or agrees with
eugenics, after No 10 hired an adviser with highly controversial views.
In a tense briefing with the media, the prime minister’s deputy
official spokesman declined several times to distance Johnson from the
views of his adviser, Andrew Sabisky, who has suggested “enforced contraception” be used to prevent the creation of a “permanent underclass”.
Labour has called on No 10 to sack Sabisky,
who is believed to be contracted by Downing Street under Johnson’s de
facto chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, to work on special projects.
Johnson’s official spokesman refused to comment on Sabisky, his
controversial views, or whether the prime minister agreed with them.
“The
prime minister’s views are well publicised and well documented,” the
spokesman said more than 10 times, when asked to give Johnson’s views on
the intelligence of black people and eugenics, the study of methods to
selectively breed people to improve the human race.
Sabisky, 27, has claimed black Americans have a lower than average IQ
than white people and are more likely to have an “intellectual
disability”. He also tweeted: “I am always straight up in saying that
women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to
men’s.”
In an interview from 2016, Sabisky said he was interested in the
narcolepsy drug modafinil, which also reduces the need for sleep in
healthy people by two-thirds and potentially helps brain function,
although there is evidence of a higher risk of people getting Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a life-threatening skin condition.
Sabisky said: “From a societal perspective the benefits of
giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once
a year.”
He wrote on Cummings’ website in 2014 that in order to get around unplanned pregnancies in the UK, long-term contraception should be legally enforced.
“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies,
creating a permanent underclass, would be to legally enforce universal
uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty,” he wrote.
“Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”
Ian Lavery, the Labour party chairman, said: “It is disgusting that
not only has No 10 failed to condemn Andrew Sabisky’s appalling comments
but also seems to have endorsed the idea that white people are more
intelligent than black people.
“Boris Johnson should have the backbone to make a statement in his
own words on why he has made this appointment, whether he stands by it,
and his own views on the subject of eugenics.”
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted:
“These are really not acceptable headlines for any government to be
generating (or allowing to be generated). They need to get a grip fast
and demonstrate some basic but fundamental values in the terms of our
public debate.”
The geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford also criticised the comments. He tweeted:
“Like Cummings, he appears to be bewitched by science, without having
made the effort to understand the areas he is invoking, nor its
history.”
He
said the “moral repugnance” of the remarks was “overwhelming”, adding:
“I am all for scientifically minded people advising government. In fact I
am all for scientists advising government. From this perspective,
Sabisky and indeed Cummings look bewitched by science without doing the
legwork.
“Instead this resembles the marshalling of misunderstood or specious
science into a political ideology. The history here is important,
because this process is exactly what happened at the birth of scientific
racism and the birth of eugenics.”
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said over the weekend that
Sabisky’s comments were “not my views and those are not the views of the
government”.
However, the prime minister’s deputy official spokesman said Shapps was speaking only for himself when he made that statement.