Saracens star Maro Itoje hopes the Black Lives Matter protests happening around the world following the death of George Floyd in America lead to lasting change.

The 25-year-old England second row, who has a degree in politics from the School of African and Oriental Studies, was speaking to Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking podcast.

He explained he had attended a recent Black Lives Matter protest in order to support the movement and stressed the importance of long-term solutions over short-term actions.

Itoje said the protests were very important in drawing attention to issues such as racism but warned there was a risk of “everything goes back to normal” after a few weeks.

"The risk is, and it's the same with every type of movement, is that you create a new story and a buzz for couple of weeks or a couple of months and then it dies down and everything goes back to normal,” he said.

"That's the danger. We need to bring suggestions of what can be done, what can change and how can we try and solve this problem and we need to force politicians to have this desire as well.”

The British & Irish Lion, who was born in London to Nigerian parents, also spoke about his desire to play a role in educating people about racial bias.

"Racial bias affects everyone - so black people have racial bias, white people have racial bias,” he said.

"But what happens is, when white people have this racial bias and they then get into positions of power - they become teachers, become university professors, politicians, broadcasters - it affects everybody.

"Once that happens, they then act unconsciously - some consciously and unconsciously - on this racial bias, and produce a system which is not equal opportunity for all.”