Shortly after the Christchurch killings, a Conservative party activist, who had posted photos of himself out campaigning for the party, wrote in a Jacob Rees-Mogg supporters group, “I was going through a few magazines the other day down at the local Mosque. I was really enjoying myself. Then the rifle jammed,” garnering several likes from group members. When a Buzzfeed UK reporter presented the evidence to the Tory party, he and twenty-five other members were investigated — though the Conservative party refused to divulge how many were suspended.

For years, the Tories have denied they have an Islamophobia problem, or any issue with racism at all. The most egregious examples of racism are dealt with occasionally when exposed by the media, but these instances are treated as one-offs, lone bad apples, and not representative of a structural problem with racism in any way.

After spending two years campaigning for the Conservatives to acknowledge and combat their Islamophobia problem — both the way Muslims are treated within it, and how other members speak about and act towards Muslims — one senior Conservative, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, finally called for a formal inquiry in July 2018. Even as she continued to highlight hate speech from members on Twitter, and criticize the party leadership’s silence in the media, she has, until very recently, been roundly ignored. Brandon Lewis, the Conservative chairman said, “I would dispute that [Islamophobia] is a problem that exists” within the party, and other Conservatives have claimed never to have witnessed any instances of racism or heard concerns about Islamophobia in the party raised.