The business minister Kwasi Kwarteng has said the process for hiring staff to advise Downing Street needs to be “looked at” following the resignation of the Tory adviser Andrew Sabisky over his controversial claims that intelligence was linked to race.
Kwarteng described the 27-year-old’s remarks in columns, blogs and online posts as “racist, offensive and objectionable”.
Sabisky, who is believed to have been hired following a call for “misfits and weirdos” to join the government, quit his post as a contractor on Monday night after his views on eugenics and the link between race and IQ were revealed, sparking an outcry.
Kwarteng’s condemnation came after almost 48 hours without a senior member of Boris Johnson’s government criticising Sabisky’s comments or explaining how he had been hired.
The minister told BBC Radio 5 live on Tuesday: “The message has been clear – his remarks were totally unacceptable. They were racist and they were offensive and he has left whatever post he had. I don’t know who he is. I read in the papers he’s 27 years old, I don’t know how he’s had time to write all this stuff to be honest.
“It’s been objectionable, offensive and he’s left the government. I think it’s unfortunate he was hired. He’s now left and we can now all move on.”
He said the government “should prevent racists from coming into No 10 or wherever he was working”.
“We do need to look at these processes but the fact is his remarks have been identified and very quickly pushed out … and we can move on.”
Questions will continue to be raised on Tuesday about the vetting process and what Sabisky’s exact role had been. He described himself as a political “super-forecaster” on online blogs and once wrote on the blog run by Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief aide.
A catalogue of racist and callous published remarks has emerged since the weekend, many from several years ago.
They include comments that black people have a lower average IQ than white people, adding that they were more “in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation”.
In Schools Week 2016 he argued that drugs for narcolepsy could be used to improve brain function, even though there were health risks. “From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year,” he said.
He also suggested the legal enforcement of contraception at the onset of puberty to prevent an underclass because benefit claimants “reproduce at higher rates than the general population”.
The Tory MP Caroline Nokes, who is chair of the Commons’ women and equalities select committee, said she was disappointed by the silence from Downing Street regarding Sabisky.
“It does seem that when the call went out for misfits and weirdos that’s exactly what Downing Street got,” she told the Radio 4 Today programme.
“And no comment from Downing Street, who could have chosen to distance themselves from his youthful comments at any point, but they chose not to do so.
“I’m disappointed that it took this long for either this young man to resign or for Downing Street to take action.”