The National Education Union (NEU) recently held a ‘No Child Left Behind Conference’, bringing campaigners together around the call ‘Free School Meals for All’.  What follows is an edited version of the presentation given by IRR deputy director Riz Hussain on the panel, ‘Universalism as an antidote to populism’.  

Universal policies, those that treat everyone fairly and with dignity, can and should act as powerful counters to populism. However, universalism alone, particularly when framed in a colour-blind way, cannot tackle the roots of inequality or the racialised narratives that populism thrives on.  

A packed room. Bold ideas. One shared goal: Free School Meals for every primary pupil.

Friday’s conference showed the power of our growing coalition.

Next stop: delivering our open-letter to the PM at Labour Party Conference.

Add your name? → https://t.co/gD5Rmebt37 pic.twitter.com/KwuxqAcTJP

— No Child Left Behind (@NoChildBehindUK) July 4, 2025

Populism and scapegoating  

Populism doesn’t just grow in a vacuum, it is deliberately fuelled by scapegoating, by constructing migrants, Muslims and racialised communities as ‘the enemy within’, ‘economic tourists’ or ‘welfare scroungers’.  

The IRR’s 2024 report Mainstreaming hate: how the Right exploits the crisis to divide us highlighted how scapegoating has played out across the decades, from immigration changes that excluded refugees from the welfare state in the 1990s to more recent policies like the two-child benefit cap, justified by racialised rhetoric around ‘benefit broods’. This is language designed to provoke division and resentment. These attacks hollow out the very idea of universality by stressing its racialised boundaries in terms of who is seen as deserving of support – and who isn’t.  

It was only last month that Nigel Farage speaking at a Reform UK policy conference, about the two-child benefit cap, said that he has never been a populist politician, but a politician that pushes minority opinions to become majority ones. Then he went on to talk about how the two-child benefit cap is wrong if it is aimed at British families. A deafening dog whistle.   

When we talk about universal policies such as free school meals for all children, we have to be honest about two things. First, the policy isn’t truly universal as it is tied to Universal Credit eligibility, which still excludes millions of low-paid families who don’t meet the threshold. Secondly, while it’s a step in the right direction, it can’t be seen as an antidote to populism or poverty.  

Let’s take a step back and ask, why do so many children – Black, Brown, or white – need free school meals in the first place? In recent years poverty data shows working-class communities of all backgrounds are facing the same fundamental issues: food insecurity, fuel debt, housing precarity, and the loss of local safety nets.  

But we cannot allow this shared hardship to erase racialised experiences.  

Figures show that Black and Minority ethnic children are significantly overrepresented among those eligible for free school meals. This isn’t just a statistic – it’s a signifier. A signifier of entrenched inequalities in employment, in access to secure housing, and in how families are treated by the welfare state.   

The far Right and the politics of scarcity  

These inequalities have deep historical roots and are actively maintained by the political narratives that pit racialised communities against the white working class in a false competition over scarce resources. This is what we must name as the “politics of scarcity” –  the idea that helping one group means hurting another.  

The Conservative Party’s CRED report was a clear example of how this plays out, painting Black Caribbean families as lacking the right values while upholding other communities as models of hard work and resilience. This tactic is stigmatisation by comparison. It fractures solidarity and distracts from the structural causes of poverty.  

Even when people like Marcus Rashford speak up to challenge child hunger, they face media and political vilification, especially when they don’t ‘stay in their lane’. This shows us how tightly race and class are policed in public discourse.   

Free school meals for all is an important policy. It can relieve pressure, restore dignity, and bring children together over a shared meal. But it must go further. Populism by its very nature is rooted in far-right ideas.  

Building solidarity: the role of trades unions  

Our Mainstreaming Hate report provided practical recommendations to trade unionists and activists about practical actions that are needed if we are to truly defeat the far Right.  

We need to combat the spread of disinformation. We require trade unions and members to come up with educational tools to address the issue of far-right attitudes in classrooms, a burning issue in areas impacted by the far-right riots where children who may have participated in the riots sit alongside children who were traumatised by them.  

It was only last year that the Children’s Commissioner was accused of whitewashing the whole issue of far-right involvement in the summer riots. In the report she said that young people were not primarily motivated by ‘far-right, anti-immigration or racist views’ or by online misinformation.  

We need to push back against the scapegoating of minorities. Difference, whether it’s racial, religious, sexual, gendered or based on immigration status is being weaponised against us. Understanding the issues that unite us and seeing how they connect us should be the basis of strong solidarity.  

And we need to stand out against nativism. In a time of economic precarity, it’s important that the trade union movement plays its part in dismantling the nativist idea that deprivation and a lack of opportunities is because ‘multiculturalism has failed us’ or ‘the white working class has legitimate concerns’. What we really should be asking is: why are so many families still poor? Why are so many working-class families, of all backgrounds, living on the edge? And who is responsible?  

It’s those who hold power, those who make decisions that affect systems. To truly make a change, we need policies that go beyond surface inequality. Ones that confront racism, challenge populist scapegoating and repair the economic conditions that fuel both.  

That’s the real antidote. Solidarity built not on erasure of difference, but on recognition of shared struggle and mutual respect.