Department of love? No , all we need is trade

Have you ever wondered what they get up to all day in Whitehall? No doubt you imagine dedicated Sir Humphreys poring over White Papers and eU directives, deciding how best to implement them in Britain’s interests.

You’d be wrong. and not just because, certainly when it comes to Brexit, most of our senior mandarins are actively working

against the expressed wishes of the British people who pay their wages.

There are more than 400,000 civil servants beavering away in england, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales — and that doesn’t include all those employed by the NHS, Town Halls and the vast standing armies hired by the hundreds of assorted quangos who now administer swathes of so-called public services.

as of summer 2017, the latest figures available, there were 5.24 million people drawing salaries from the taxpayer.

Many perform vital functions, from nursing the sick to emptying the dustbins.

But there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of supernumeraries who contribute absolutely nothing of value.

entire departments exist simply to provide gainful employment and entertainment for those who work there.

Forty years ago, Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, wrote a novel called Office Life about a company which, while appearing to be a hive of industry, had no end product. It was a government front organisation set up to manufacture jobs for the otherwise unemployable.

If Keith was around today, he could have had great fun writing a sequel set in Whitehall, or any other civil service department, for that matter.

TaKe the Department of International Trade (DIT). Until fairly recently, no one saw any need for such a ministry. We already had a Department of Trade and Industry.

The DIT was the bastard child of yet another wasteful Whitehall reorganisation after the referendum, to keep Brexiteer Liam Fox out of mischief while the rest of the Cabinet got on with the serious business of betraying the 17.4million people who voted Leave.

Ostensibly, it was set up to promote global trade deals once we are free of the shackles of the single market and the customs union. That’s the spin, anyway.

Scrape the surface, though, and you discover just another job creation exercise, dedicated to furthering the true purpose of modern governance — social engineering.

Whatever it says on the brass plate outside the door, the number one priority of every public body is the ruthless imposition of the ‘equality and diversity’ agenda.

antonia Romeo, the department’s handsomely paid Permanent Secretary, gave the game away in an official announcement to staff, uncovered by the Mail’s ephraim Hardcastle.

She was publicising the launch of a new LGBT Mentoring Programme, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. ‘Fantastic example of the brill DIT team working to make the department the most inclusive in Whitehall. Love is great.’ ‘Brill’? ‘Love is great’?

Sounds like some dopey bird tweeting her bestie about a new boyfriend. Is this really the kind of language we expect senior civil servants to be employing in staff announcements? Sadly, the answer is almost certainly ‘yes’. The only point of the DIT is to negotiate trade deals with countries such as america, India, australia, China and South Korea, ready for when

(if ?) we leave the eU. It’s not there to ‘mentor’ gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

But ‘celebrating diversity’ is what gets the likes of alfa Romeo out of bed every morning. She’s also urging her subordinates to enter this year’s Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion awards.

‘We want to make UK govt most inclusive employer by 2020. In DIT our great staff networks are working to make DIT a place where everyone can achieve their potential .# Champion Difference .’

Why? Look, before the usual suspects start bouncing up and down screaming ‘homophobe’ or ‘transphobe’ or whatever other hysterical term of abuse is currently in vogue with the Twitchfork mob, let me make one thing crystal.

I couldn’t care less about anyone’s sexuality. I’m not criticising gays, lesbians or bisexuals. I’m criticising the Government and the posturing clowns who worship at the altar of diversity in order to advertise their ‘liberal’ credentials and cynically further their own careers.

If, say, a transvestite is the best person for the job, he should get it on merit — and not simply because he likes dressing up in women’s clothing. I may have singled out the DIT here, but the problem is endemic. You can’t get on in the public sector without overtly ‘celebrating diversity’.

These days you’re more likely to find a rainbow-coloured gay rights banner than a Union flag flying over your local Town Hall or police station. That’s if you can find a police station still open.

a few weeks ago, the headquarters of the Health and Safety executive was lit up with the colours of the ‘TransFlag’ — a new one on me. The HSe was just one of thousands of public bodies marking# T rans Day of visibility.

again, why? If any group is currently over-represented in the public square today, it’s the minuscule, intolerant, noisy ‘trans’ lobby.

YOU might argue that all this is just harmless grandstanding, showing off. But it is also displacement activity, diverting attention away from what these organisations are supposed to be doing — whether negotiating trade deals or filling in potholes.

Where it becomes sinister is when those public servants who deviate from the diversity agenda find themselves discriminated against and even sacked for dissent.

We’ve had everyone from Christian registrars dismissed for declining to perform gay civil partnership ceremonies, to Scottish firemen punished for refusing to take part in gay pride marches.

What’s going to happen to any DIT staff member who doesn’t want to celebrate diversity?

as I’ve long maintained, those who preach ‘tolerance’ loudest are some of the most intolerant bigots on the planet.

Quite why taxpayers should be forced to keep them in lucrative employment is beyond me.

We may still cleave to the image of Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey appleby as the epitome of a senior civil servant. But the grim reality today is far closer to the DIT’s antonia Romeo, whose ambition is to make her department the most inclusive in Whitehall.

Love is great. Brill! I suppose a trade deal is out of the question.