May’s audit taken with a large dose of irony

THINK back to that overcast Wednesday last month when, after two weeks of embarrassment and chaos, the UK finally got its new prime minister. Most expected Theresa May’s first speech, delivered, as tradition dictates, from the steps of Downing Street, to be about how she intended to extricate the country from the EU. Instead, the focus was on inequality.

“If you’re from an ordinary working-class family, the government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours,” she said. “We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives.” Nobody expected that.

After pledging to fight the “burning injustices” of our unequal society and promising not to entrench the advantages of the “privileged few”, she moved on to race, promising to improve the dire situation faced by black people in the UK, who continue to lag behind their white peers on everything from education and job prospects to salary – and that’s before you mention discrimination within the criminal justice system.

The content and tone of this speech surprised as many from Mrs May’s own party as from the opposition; here was a Tory prime minister promising the sort of progressive politics we would expect from Labour or the SNP.

At the weekend, Mrs May appeared to back this up with the announcement of an audit of the way ethnic minorities and white working-class people are treated by public services in England such as the NHS, schools, job centres, police and the courts. She expected the review to contain many “difficult truths”, she said.

So, what is one to make of all this? Is Theresa May really going to be the most progressive prime minister the UK has had in 40 years?

If the last six years hadn’t happened (hell, even if the last six months hadn’t happened), one might be tempted to say that perhaps the Tories had genuinely learned from their toxic “nasty party” past and were actually going to practise that One Nation strategy they always like to preach.

But the last six months, where Tories on both sides of the Brexit debate bordered on the racist in their immigration rhetoric, did happen. And so did the last six years, when the Conservative government – of which Mrs

‘‘ Has she honestly forgotten this litany of horrendous cuts that have caused such hardship to the very people she claims to be reaching out to?

May was a key player – ruthlessly sacrificed working-class people by cutting key public services in an obsessive austerity drive while giving tax breaks to the wealthy.

Perhaps Mrs May has amnesia. Has she honestly forgotten this litany of horrendous cuts and policy choices that have caused such hardship to the very people she claims to be reaching out to? I’m thinking now of the particularly pernicious, blunt instrument that is the bedroom tax and the welfare cuts that have made it even harder, sometimes nigh on impossible, to make work pay. I’m thinking too of the disastrous double whammy for bright English working-class youngsters of any ethnic group: the tripling of university fees and cancelling of student grants.

Mrs May voted for all of these, while at the same time supporting cuts to the top tax rate of income tax and inheritance tax that directly benefited the “privileged few” she wants us to believe she is willing to forsake.

And lest we forget that only last week, while the nation was focused on Jeremy Corbyn’s difficulties with railway seating, justice secretary Liz Truss was quietly confirming that the government fully intends to go forward with its plan to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a so-called British Bill of Rights.

If Mrs May really wanted to ensure equality is taken seriously by the UK’s public services, she would not be seeking to scrap the very legislative protections that currently underpin them. This commitment also highlights that despite recent warm words to NicolaSturgeononthestepsofButeHouse, Mrs May is fully prepared to go to war with the Scottish Government on this issue; Ms Sturgeon has sensibly said she will oppose any British Bill of Rights in Scotland.

With all this in mind, I take Mrs May’s equality audit with not only a heavy pinch of salt, but a considerable dose of irony. After all, you don’t need yet another bureaucratic exercise to tell you the bleedin’ obvious: Britain is a massively divided country in terms of class, race and geography. And these divides are deepening.

No audit, review, report or other papershuffling exercise is going to tackle the generations of entrenched inequality that leavesomanyinoursociety–bothblackand white – not only behind, but beaten before they’ve even started running the race.

Will it really be a Tory that reaches out to offer a hand up to these millions? Don’t make me laugh.