Yesterday the civil service finally acted on the advice of its Race Disparity Unit and banned the archaic acronym “BAME” across government. In a gov.uk blog post, the mandarins explained that the phrase’s lack of precision means it was both exclusionary of certain minority groups and not inclusive enough. “Ethnic minorities or people from ethnic minority backgrounds” is much better…

While Guido is pleased to see the civil service are putting time and thought into such an important issue, he’s less impressed with the Labour Party, which clearly doesn’t care about making its members feel included or appreciate the dangers of using the wrong acronym. The party’s national executive committee are preparing to run internal elections later this year for… BAME representatives. It also still has a whole section of its website explaining its “long history” of championing the BAME community – although that page also features a quote claiming “Labour is the party of equality“. A quote attributed to Dawn Butler and, yes, Jeremy Corbyn…

Funnily enough, the civil service blog post specifically mentions how BAME ignores “Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and ‘other white’ ethnic minority groups“. Wonder which “other” ethnic minority groups they mean…