The good news from multicultural Britain is that we now have a Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, London Mayor, and Scottish First Minister of ethnic minority heritages. The country’s last three Chancellors also had non-white family backgrounds.

This is clearly something to be celebrated and suggests a degree of social maturity reached by the democracy of a nation that has formerly been shamed by a long history of racial and colonial injustice.

This is not however to suggest that racism is entirely a thing of the past in the UK. Indeed, a recent report on the culture of the Metropolitan Police accused the country’s largest police service of continuing to harbor racial prejudice and discrimination on an institutional basis. Many of its findings were truly shocking, as the current head of that organization was swift to acknowledge.

That report also found extremes of misogyny entrenched in London’s police force. The Met is hardly unique in this. Earlier this month, a similarly damning investigation into the chauvinistic culture at the Confederation of British Industry resulted in the sudden dismissal of its boss.

It seems painfully clear that some of the core institutions of the British establishment are still a long way off the modern enlightened state we might expect.

It was in this context that, also this month, a senior member of the British Conservative Party launched an unprecedentedly blunt attack on the Home Secretary.

Sayeeda Warsi now sits in the House of Lords. She is an outspoken politician, popular for her wit, candor, and integrity. She has previously served as a government minister and as chair of the Conservative Party. It also just so happens to be the case that her Muslim parents had immigrated to Britain from Pakistan.

Her robust public profile meant that her comments received wide media attention when she declared that Home Secretary Suella Braverman was “unfit” for her high office.

She has accused Ms. Braverman of “emboldening racists” with her “racist rhetoric”.

“This is not the kind of way in which you expect the Home Secretary to speak,” she said.

Suella Braverman, she added, seeks to exploit racial divisions for political purposes, trying to turn “almost every issue into a cultural race war."

At the same time, another senior Tory told The Guardian newspaper that they believed Braverman was a “real racist bigot” and that the Prime Minister himself needs to step in to stop the “culture wars” being stoked by far-right elements in his own Cabinet.

Indeed, last week, it was even reported that she had asked the Home Office to intervene in what she considered to be an overly rigorous police investigation into ostensibly racist decorations at a public house.

Suella Braverman’s family background boasts Hindu-Christian Indian roots, via Kenya and Mauritius. Yet, despite her own multicultural credentials, since becoming Home Secretary, her stern views on immigration have provoked a great deal of controversy and unease.

She has become particularly notorious for pursuing draconian policies in response to the issue of asylum-seekers making the dangerous journey across the English Channel in small boats.

Most recently, she has introduced legislation that will impose lifelong immigration and travel bans on individuals attempting that unlawful crossing and placing refugees (including children) in detention prior to their deportation to central Africa.

Indeed, earlier this year, Ms. Braverman stirred the xenophobic outrage of the angry tabloids when she announced that there were 100 million people around the world who could qualify for asylum in the United Kingdom – and that “they are coming here." No evidence was given to back up this bold assertion.

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But, let's face it, she’s hardly the kind of politician who’d waste an opportunity for a good loud dose of moral panic merely because the facts don’t fit.

She has also infuriated more liberal members of her own party in her bids to generate political capital by repeatedly stressing the ethnic origins of a number of the perpetrators involved in several high-profile cases of pedophile grooming scandals.

Ms. Braverman has said that these criminal gangs have included what she called a “predominance” of “Pakistani males who hold cultural values totally at odds with British values."

This particular claim was described as “inflammatory and divisive” by Baroness Warsi. It was made despite the evidence of a recent report published by Ms. Braverman’s own department which stated that members of such gangs are “most commonly white."

Although the British Conservative Party includes more senior members of Black and Asian backgrounds than the Labour opposition, it clearly continues to struggle with racism within its own ranks. It includes a vocal minority of powerful figures who, regardless of their own ethnic origins, are seeking to build support from the extreme right-wing of the political spectrum.

It remains unclear whether they believe their own hate-fuelled rhetoric, or if they push these views in attempts to secure short-term political kudos and electoral gain.

Whatever their motivation, these tactics are to their party’s great and immediate shame and may eventually come at a significant cost both to that party and to British society as a whole. They normalize racial hatred: they allow it to appear mainstream.

In recent months, riots and acts of violence have erupted in response to the housing of refugees in various parts of the country. These may have been whipped up by racist extremists – but they’ve also been prompted by the explicit assertions of ministers at the very top of Rishi Sunak’s administration.

Sayeeda Warsi supposed that it appears that the current Home Secretary is “more interested in the rhetoric and the noise of creating a culture war” than in doing her actual job.

She added that since Ms. Braverman had made her remarks about British Pakistani men, she has had to warn her own father and son to take extra care when walking out on the streets of their hometown for fear of racially motivated aggression and violence.

The ultimate responsibility of the Home Secretary is to maintain public safety and security. But this is a Home Secretary who has never seemed to take that duty particularly seriously.

After all, the previous Prime Minister had fired her for breaching security protocols – before her successor, Mr. Sunak, reinstated her less than a week later.

Rishi Sunak is now under pressure from influential Tories to moderate or remove his maverick Home Secretary. However, it seems uncertain that he has the authority or the will to do so.

It is not an overstatement to suggest that the moral heart of his party hangs in the balance. The Prime Minister’s courage or cowardice may determine the long-term fate of its political soul.

The situation is increasingly urgent, and the time he has left for decisive and effective action is fast running out.

At the end of last week, the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister was forced to resign following an investigation into allegations that he had bullied junior colleagues.

He criticized the inquiry established by Rishi Sunak for setting its evidential bar too low, and it is unclear whether this departure of a key ally will strengthen or weaken Mr. Sunak’s authority and reputation for political integrity, just a few days after a parliamentary probe was launched to look into irregularities in the Prime Minister’s declarations of his own financial interests.