THE PATRON SAINT OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
HArrIeT Harman should have been in the SAS. Yes, I know it’s hard to envisage the rt Hon Lady, QC, with her Greenham Common peace- camp views, abseiling through the windows of some foreign embassy to hurl stungrenades at hostage-takers, or spray hot lead at some sultan of terrorism.
Harriet with her face smeared in camouflage cream, lighting up a marlboro after despatching turbanned zealots (or ‘members of our ethnic community’ as she might prefer). only in the more vivid, sheetripping dreams of Boris Johnson would this occur.
Despite being born to privilege — daughter of a Harley Street doctor, schooled privately, a cousin of the aristocratic Pakenham family — she is Labour’s venerated mother hen.
Nevertheless, she would have been a good fit for our special forces, for the following reason: booby traps. one of the skills required of an SAS soldier is sabotage and leaving behind nasty surprises.
Harriet did the political equivalent when, as leader of the Commons and minister for women and equality in the last Labour government, she used her twin positions to secure time for a Bill that would hard-wire political correctness through every aspect not just of Whitehall, but also British public life.
The equality Act 2010 was her booby trap. It only just squeaked through in time before Westminster broke up for the general election in may of that year, which Labour lost. But what it enshrined in law was the principle of the equality Impact Assessment.
equality what? If you do not know what one of those is, you are not a member of the ruling class.
Put simply, the Act imposed on all public authorities the duty to do three things: i) eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation; ii) advance equality of opportunity between minorities and the majority; iii) foster good relations between those minorities and the mainstream.
These legal stipulations came as a career- boost to finger- waggers, because they meant public bodies had to be able to show they were actively being nice to minorities.
Which, in turn, meant employing lots of people who can not only identify discrimination but also measure it, box that data into reports and present those reports back to their employers, who can then wave them at lawyers to show that the Act’s requirements have been satisfied.
Thus is an entire sector created. A new profession — that of the equality Impact Assessor — is born. And all thanks to ms Harman, Peckham’s answer to eva Peron.
For the People Who Know Better, nothing is so handy — so deliciously clerical and legalistic — as an impact assessment. Civil servants grasped right away that equality Impact Assessments have made them masters and mistresses of inertia. Politicians can propose what they want, but if their reforms fail to pass an equality Impact Assessment, well, that’s the end of the reform.
By the time the impact assessment has been commissioned, conducted at glacial speed in the face of shrieking objections from special interest groups and their lobbyists, checked, sat on, published, objected to again, sent to the courts, discussed on the Today programme, rejected by the courts, sent for appeal and so on and so on, the original policy — which was approved by the electorate — will be found to be ‘not worth the candle’.
It will then be quietly dropped, politicians saying that they have ‘listened and shown we are not unreasonable’. Democracy 0, Status Quo about 20.
BeHoLDthe paralysis of democracy and a feast for litigators and approved assessors. equalities is now a whole field of careers and consultancies, piggybacking on the greater bureaucratisation of life. The sector is composed of training courses, indoctrination procedures, advice leaflets, symposia, compliance officers, ombudsmen, gender neutrality awareness, diversity managers, inclusion examiners, exclusion litigation specialists, key equality partnerships, community outreach programmes, equality implementation strategies, intervention advisers, inclusive environment auditors and more.
Harriet Harman might bridle at the term ‘queen bee’ — a touch gender specific — but it is suitable given that a queen bee gives life to thousands of worker bees, henceforth to be known as inclusion and diversity managers.
As the SAS might say, mission accomplished.