Ditch ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and you lose values

BA’S change of policy in on-board announcements sacrifices dignity for the sake of woke lip service

British Airways is dropping “ladies and gentlemen” from its announcements in a bid for inclusion, which is a pity because one of the reasons I’m a loyal BA customer is that even as flights have become over-packed and uncomfortable, I always appreciated their veneer of old world charm. For those of us terrified of flying, this stuff matters. Easyjet, I suspect, actually spends money to look cheap – and thus feels precarious. I feel safer with the ladies who call me “gentleman” on upper-crust BA because they make a plane seem more than just a coach with wings.

“Ladies and gentlemen” also denotes respect (there’s a reason why they don’t say “fasten your seat belts, lads and lasses”). Refined language – words chosen carefully – implies that rather than bodies in seats, packed in like sardines for the sake of profit, we are individuals with personalities whose sex has been noted and, yes, flattered. As I argue in my new book, Whatever Happened to Tradition?, out this Thursday (and I advise you to buy it before the reviews), traditional approaches to the genders assign them dignity and moral qualities. We speak of feminine grace, for instance, or masculine courage. The title of lady or gentlemen is not just shorthand but aspirational.

People also feel something is owed to their sex. In the era of Metoo, we emphasise women’s right to be treated with courtesy and consideration, which an earlier generation would have regarded as the right to be treated like a lady. There are masculine rights, too: independence is one. My late father crops up a lot in the book; I guess he’s been playing on my mind, and I’d date the point at which he became difficult to live with as when he was sacked from his job.

My mother in a similar position would have got on with it; women do. Men can become angry and morose, because they have lost purpose, comradeship and the self-perception that they were the ones keeping this family afloat. Elites might regard this sort of masculine angst as passé or pathetic, but that’s irrelevant: it’s an instinct.

Just as expectant mothers recoil at being described as “pregnant people”, because the emphasis has shifted away from them – a person – to the body, as if mum or dad are abstractions with genitals attached. This is what a strand of identity politics thinks of us. It fixates on our external appearance. The soul is forgotten.

It’s said that the boardroom has been captured by the woke, but this is true in so far as business has always tried to reflect the current values of the elite – and upgrading your language to sound contemporary is a lot cheaper than upgrading the toilets in economy.

But things have moved to a dangerous stage when corporations seek to improve their customers rather than the other way around (I’m not saying BA are there yet but other brands definitely are), and the goal of serving a community switches to reshaping it.

Control language and you control meaning. Ditch “ladies and gentlemen” and the attendant values go with them: we become selfish, rude passengers pushing to get off the plane first, quite happy to shove an old lady out of the way to do it.

It’s easier to write a book than to ‘ sell it. I’m spending every minute of the day now trying to flog the thing, judging my success by watching its rankings on Amazon, which puts books in seemingly random categories so narrow that it’s possible to become a bestseller off half-a-dozen sales.

At present, I am ranked #6 in “Anthropological Customs”. Scanning the other titles, I realise that I’ve bought a copy of most of them as research for my own book – so it’s not inconceivable that I’ve generated an Anthropological Customs boom by myself. I can’t imagine there was much interest in the circumcision rites of Aboriginal Australians before I got out my credit card.

Meanwhile, back at the bat cave, I’m switching Telegraph jobs from weekday leader writer (the anonymous column next to this) to political sketch writer – partnered with the magnificent Madeline Grant. It’s been seven years full-time; longer, freelance. My first leader was on the US 2012 election, in which the paper delivered the verdict that “A Romney presidency is not as terrifying a thought as his critics would have us believe” (in 2012, Mitt was considered extreme, and that was a compliment).

In 2017, this is absolutely true, I was asked to help write a standby leader/ obituary in the event of Donald Trump’s assassination: there was a theory that someone might try to blow him up at his inauguration, perhaps with a drone. This was of particular interest to me because I was assigned to attend said inauguration – in fact the Trump people had kindly given me a seat in the front row. There’s a reason why in many of the photos, I’m looking at the sky.

This column will continue, if only to keep readers up to speed with Bertie, the naughtiest dog in the world, whose current obsession is with feathers. He picks them up off the field and collects them in his mouth. By the time he gets home, it looks like he’s eaten a pigeon.