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Downing Street has refused to say whether Boris Johnson agrees with the claim by a No.10 aide that black people are less intelligent than white people.
The extreme claim was reportedly made by 27-year-old Andrew Sabisky, who answered Dominic Cummings’ call for “misfits and weirdos” to join his team running No.10.
At a briefing on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson refused to condemn Sabisky’s views about black people or say whether the prime minister agreed with them, pointing only to Johnson’s previous statements.
The spokesperson also refused to condemn Sabisky’s call for the introduction of eugenics or his claim that women’s sport is “more comparable” to the Paralympics than men’s sport.
“I’m not going to be commenting on individual appointments,” the spokesperson said.
“The prime minister’s views are well documented and well publicised”.
The PM has been criticised in the past for referring to Black Africans as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”.
He also once wrote that working class mothers’ children were “unloved and undisciplined” and might “mug you on the street corner”.
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Sabisky has been hired as a contractor in Downing Street after answering Cummings’ call for staff.
But Downing Street’s response sparked criticism from Tory former minister Caroline Nokes, who also called for Sabisky to be sacked.
Sabisky, a self-styled “superforecaster”, once wrote about the IQs of black people in a 2014 blog post being circulated on social media.
“If the mean black American IQ is (best estimate based on a century’s worth of data) around 85, as compared to a mean white American IQ of 100, then if IQ is normally distributed, you will see a far greater percentage of blacks than whites in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation.”
Sabisky also suggested enforcing the uptake of contraception to stop unplanned pregnancies “creating a permanent underclass”.
“One way to get around problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty,” Sabisky wrote.
“Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”
In a series of now-deleted tweets, the researcher also described female Labour MPs Yvette Cooper, Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey as “dim”, while writing in another: “I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”
In a 2016 interview with Schools Week, Sabisky also discusses a drug called modafinil.
It is usually used to tackle sleepiness due to narcolepsy but can be used as a brain-enhancer. Its side effects in children include a higher risk of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which is a life-threatening condition that causes a person’s skin to die and fall off.
He told Schools Week: “From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year.”
Labour party chair Ian Lavery MP 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.”
According to the Times, Sabisky has already attended several meetings in Number 10 and reports to Cummings.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps was pressed on the issue when he appeared on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
“Not only have I not seen the story, I don’t actually know the individual you are referring to at all,” he said.
He went on to say the comments made by Sabisky were views “neither I or the government share in any shape or form”.