The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
The nation’s favourite retailer has lost the plot
In the bleak post-festive period, John Lewis faced various dilemmas, including how to shift thousands of unsold Venus fly trap toys. After a bizarre Christmas advertising campaign starring a carnivorous plant, staff struggled even to give away leftover stock.
Much more troubling was the company’s bottom line. Amid disastrous end of year results, the famous department store was preparing to axe 11,000 jobs.
While one part of the HR team agonised over how to tell staff, another part was trying to make them all feel better by celebrating all their potential genders and sexual persuasions.
In an effort to further the company’s ambition to “become the UK’s most inclusive business,” the finishing touches were being put on a new staff magazine, produced by the “LGBTQIA+ network”, to educate the shattered workforce in gender ideology.
Who would care about a few little job losses if they could look forward to the company marking “International Non-binary People’s Day”? If that didn’t appeal, worried staff might be cheered by the prospect of more than a dozen other special occasions the company will mark this year, including “Asexual Awareness Week”, “Trans Day of Remembrance” and “Pansexual and Panromantic Visibility Day”.
Much more sinister than the virtue-signalling determination to mark these bewildering non events is the way company bosses have taken it upon themselves to educate their workforce, using the 32 pages of its “Identity” magazine to push highly contentious and fringe ideas about biological sex as if they are universally accepted. According to the magazine, the fierce debate about gender ideology is just “pointless politics,” and employees should concentrate on being exemplary “trans allies.”
Perhaps worst of all is a plug for trans charity Mermaids, which is under investigation by the Charity Commission over safeguarding concerns. Are we content with parents of girls who think they might be boys being pointed towards online videos showing how they can use “breast binders” to flatten their chests?
In case John Lewis has forgotten, it is not a Communist-style re-education camp, it’s a retailer. Its job is not to preach about pronouns but to sell us white goods and Le Creuset casserole dishes.
Following a £230 million loss in
2022, it should be laser focused on what it does best: marketing tasteful garden furniture, expensive cosmetics and pots and pans. This is a company that has thrived for more than a century by oozing wholesome family values. Being non-controversial is part of its core offer. Neither staff nor customers need to think about sex or sexuality when they’re searching for cake tins.
To borrow the kind of woke terminology so approved by its “people managers”, it is supposed to be a safe space from all that. The place still has “Haberdashery” departments, for goodness’ sake: treasure troves of buttons and bows, lace doilies and sewing patterns for petticoats.
Asked the point of it all, HR bosses would no doubt reply that it makes for “happier people” working for a “happier business” in a “happier world”. These cringeworthy catchwords are all over the corporate website, which uses so much politically correct language that sections are almost unintelligible. (“Care Experienced People,” anyone?) In the new magazine, Tina Mitchell, Retail Director of John Lewis’ associate company Waitrose, says she wants “minority” partners to feel so supported they are “overwhelmed”. In her own words, she wants them to say: “Get back with all your love, get back with it! I can’t take it any more!”
Well, a word of warning, Ms Mitchell – or should that be “Mx”? Having read the magazine, I wouldn’t wish to assume anyone’s gender. What I can say is that very soon, it may be John Lewis customers who may not be able to take much more. With these warped priorities, the company deserves to fail.