Acting Prime Minister podcast: Bim Afolami on why taking the knee is 'virtue signalling'

Bim Afomali has labelled taking the knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement as "virtue signalling", saying people should be "actually doing something" to achieve equality instead.

The Conservative MP, who is a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, said taking the knee is a "preformative emotion" that should be replaced with "actual political achievement".

Speaking on the ITV News podcast Acting Prime Minister, he said: "In modern politics, so much of what we do just seems to be - and I use this phrase only very, very gently - virtue signalling.

"We perform to show others rather than actually doing something. And for me, that's the wrong way around."

Explaining why he wouldn't take the knee himself, he said: "I don't believe in this slightly modern affectation that we've got of performative emotion and that being a substitute for actual action or actual political achievement - taking a knee is a very good example."

Bim Afolami on taking the knee:

Mr Afolami told podcast host Paul Brand he'd much prefer to see people taking real action to ensure equality.

In the episode, the MP also chats about how Donald Trump has "trashed" democracy, his relief that Joe Biden was elected president, the need to change Universal Credit and so much more.

He said he believes "black lives matter and all lives have equal value" but does not agree with the "very left wing slightly anarchist way of viewing policy".

He added: "The people who I've come across who were actually more, in my view, backward-looking in terms of their view of my race or my politics were not right-wing Conservatives, were actually not people on the left wing of the Labour Party.

"They were what I like to describe as your sort of centre-left soggy liberals, who a lot of whom could not compute the idea that a black person was a Conservative and therefore sought to suggest that 'you couldn't really understand what you were doing and you were being used by some greater power' and would literally say these things to me and would write them.

"And that I thought was particularly odd because I think it's also tinged with class prejudice as well. It's the idea that we're a particularly well-educated group with a very particular status in society, and it's our job to look after black people and make sure we make their decisions for them.

"That sort of attitude is something that I pushed back very hard against."

Listen to the full interview on the Acting Prime Minister podcast here: