The fun and games in woke Whitehall continue. After revealing earlier this week how FCDO mandarins were receiving lectures on “trans and intersex inclusion” during working hours, Guido has now been sent another internal document showing that the DHSC held an “intensive five-day training course” last month in which officials were given talks from “senior speakers” with “top level advice on policymaking“. Not only were staff treated to lectures about “intersectionality” and “health inequalities“, one of these “senior speakers” was Nannette Youssef from the Runnymede Trust: a Green Party councillor and self-described socialist who accused the government of having “far right backing”, “anti-Muslim” policies, and just months ago, tweeted “Fuck #PritiPatel”.

According to the document, Youssef was invited on behalf of Runnymede to “provide a perspective from an external organisation“. The online talk lasted a full hour, and once again, taking place at the start of a working day. Presumably the perspective of a self-described socialist and “intersectional feminist” is exactly what health department officials need at 9am on a Tuesday – not to mention in the midst of a pandemic.

A government source tells Guido:

“With backlogs building up, DHSC should know better than clocking off for this nonsense. But doing it in the name of diversity and indulging someone who maligns one of the most senior British Asians in public life, and a close colleague of their boss, is a bad joke.”

Doing it at the taxpayers’ expense isn’t a great joke either. The document also stresses – in caps – that the event programme was “NOT SEEN BY MINISTERS” and “NOT A STATEMENT OF POLICY”. That the civil service is being trained in this gobbledegook nonsense leaves Guido with little hope that the advice they go on to give will be sound…

Read the full document below…

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Thatcher famously said that “being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” John Bercow is providing absolute proof of this with his new podcast announced this afternoon, Absolute Power. The three minute trailer released alongside the promotional material instantly reminds listeners just how odious and repellant the former speaker is, bitching about Gove, Boris and William Hague. The most hilariously lacking-in-self-awareness quote comes about the latter:

“It was a very sad last day for William Hague in the House of Commons: he was standing down at the general election and he subsequently went to the House of Lords. It was, frankly, a pitiful way for him to conclude his parliamentary career.”

Comments there from a man who never wanted to enter the Lords after his own Commons career…

Boris’s green industrial revolution is hardly off to a flying start. It’s been revealed that the government’s green homes grant scheme – which cost £314 million to install heat pumps and solar panels – has fallen dramatically short of its targets, upgrading just over 47,000 houses out of the 600,000 as planned, and somehow flushing away £50 million of taxpayers’ cash on admin alone. Probably explaining why the whole scheme was scrapped after just 6 months.

According to the Public Accounts Committee, the “poorly designed” and riddled with inefficiencies scheme, with roughly £1000 spent per home exclusively on administration costs, and massively underdelivering on the promised job opportunities:

“delivered a small fraction of its objectives, either in environmental benefits or the promised new jobs”

Guido agrees with Labour chair Meg Hillier, who described the scheme as a “slam dunk fail”. Perhaps the only consolation is the scheme was scrapped before they managed to spend the full £1.5billion as originally planned. It really puts the cost of Isulate Britain’s utopian demands into context…

Aren’t you glad we’re out? At a press conference this afternoon EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen issued a threat that mandatory, EU-wide vaccines may well be coming down the road, telling reporters:

“Potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union, this needs discussion, this needs a common approach, but it is a discussion I think that needs to be led…”

Funny thing for the head of a trade bloc to say…

The Mid Norfolk Labour Party has taken back control of party messaging, and is currently telling local residents to “VOTE GREEN PARTY THE LABOUR PARTY UNDER STARMER IS FINISHED”. The website’s edits are apparently the work of a “disgruntled former party member” who used to manage the site, however the party branch say they are “powerless to amend its website” as they do not have the necessary log-ins. The graffiti’s apparently been up for a week…

Any prospective Norfolk voters are told that Sir Keir “lied to get elected leader and backtracking on all the pledges he gave at the time. He can’t be trusted any more than Johnson can.” It seems Mid Norfolk voters are already adhering to the website’s demand – the party only got 22.2% in 2019…

Boris is referencing our story “Starmer Snubs Rayner Again Over Lobby Christmas Drinks“. Another happy reader…