Munira Mirza (born May 1978) is a British political advisor who served as Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 2019 until she resigned in February 2022.
[32] On 24 July 2019, following her former boss Johnson becoming Prime Minister, Mirza was appointed Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit, replacing James Marshall.
[37] In November 2020, ITV political editor Robert Peston said in The Spectator that calls for the BBC's "cultural re-education", which many assumed came from Johnson's former adviser Dominic Cummings, actually came from Mirza and her husband.
[38] On 3 February 2022, she resigned as Johnson's adviser, citing comments he had made in the House of Commons, accusing the Labour leader Keir Starmer of being responsible for failing to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile – claims which the BBC described as "widely debunked".
[44] Mirza has a record of advocating for public investment in the arts, but has also warned that organisations will need to become "more entrepreneurial and look for ways to stretch their resources", including through corporate sponsorship.
[29] Writing in The Spectator in 2017, Mirza described the anti-racism movement as a "bogus moral crusade" imported from the US, "...with its demented campus dramas and neuroses about 'safe spaces', 'micro-aggressions' and 'cultural appropriation'".
[45] She has attracted criticism for saying that "it seems that a lot of people in politics think it's a good idea to exaggerate the problem of racism", noting that Theresa May's proposed racial disparities audit for public services set the scene for "another bout of political self-flagellation regarding the subject of race in Britain", whilst "accusations of institutional racism – and their official endorsement – have corroded BAME communities' trust in public services, thereby making things worse.
"[2][3] As well as calling May's racial disparities audit a "phoney race war", Mirza also described The Lammy Review of 2017 into the treatment of BAME groups in the justice system as "wrongheaded" and "misleading".
When people argue we should use more sensitive language what they are really saying is let's not be critical at all, let's not offend, let's not criticise this practice because it upsets Muslims",[2][3] further defending Johnson's comments as "reasoned, balanced and thoughtful".
[47] Regarding the Windrush scandal, Mirza claimed that "the real lesson is not one of racism, as in the deliberate targeting of ethnic minority groups, rather it is that the process of immigration enforcement needs to be improved".