Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell popped up on the Today programme this morning to tout his new book, and in the process of plugging the dossier, the Rest is Politics host dealt a characteristic jab at the Tories:
“One of the problems we’ve got with politics is that the gene pool for politics is getting narrower and narrower and narrower. Particularly at the top levels. Particularly, having had 13 years of this Tory government. And I think we’ve got to broaden the gene pool. That means getting more young people interested in going into politics. It means getting people from different backgrounds going into politics.”
Indeed, back in the good ol’ Blair days, under Campbell’s watch, surely Labour were leading the charge on diversity? Not quite. Credit where credit is due, in 2002 Labour brought in the first black cabinet minister, Paul Boateng. Yet, for Tony and Alastair’s first five years at the helm, the cabinet was precisely 0% ethnically diverse, and the pair soon ran out of steam on the issue. Only two Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) individuals would ever make it to Blair’s cabinet. Quite the war room on diversity.
In comparison, Sunak’s cabinet is 16% BAME, Truss’s was 30%, and Johnson’s 18%. The average age of Blair’s revolutionary 1997 cabinet was 51, whereas Johnson’s was 47.7, Truss’s 49.3, and Sunak’s has risen incrementally to 52. Of course the Labour Party has never elected a woman leader never mind Prime Minister. Thirteen years of Tory government with younger and more diverse cabinets than Blair ever had. Bad Al’s lying again…
Guido has crunched the numbers and Liz Truss’s Cabinet just pips Labour’s with a higher proportion of ethnic minority members on their front bench. The Big Four do a lot of heavy lifting, with Liz herself, James Cleverly, Suella Braverman and Kwasi Kwarteng leading the Cabinet, meaning for the first time in Britain’s history there’s not a single white man in the great offices of state. Ranil Jayawardena, Kemi Badenoch Alok Sharma and Nadhim Zahawi take the Cabinet up to seven BAME members: 23% of the total.
By Guido’s reckoning, Labour’s shadow cabinet has six ethnic minority members, or a mere 20%.
Meanwhile, Labour continue thrashing the Tories on gender and state school educations. All completely irrelevant, but nonetheless, interesting to note …
As scooped by the Mail on Sunday yesterday, a racism row has broken out over at Sky News after Inzamam Rashid – who co-conspirators will remember was suspended for three months after attending Kay Burley’s infamous lockdown birthday party – accused the channel’s coverage of being “very white”. Screenshots sent to Guido show Rashid making the comment in the chat of an all-staff meeting:
Guido’s mole said it was a bit rich of Inzamam to slag off his colleagues in Ukraine over diversity, especially since one – Stuart Ramsay – has been shot and wounded in the line of duty. In response, Sky News head John Ryley told him he wouldn’t ever send anyone to Ukraine who wasn’t experienced…
Rashid’s complaint was also called out by Alex Crawford, Sky New’s Special Correspondent, who said that while the channel does care about diversity, it’s not correct to say there has not been anyone “of colour either on or off screen”, as her “Chinese mother and grand-mother… would be appalled that their daughter’s/grand-daughter’s heritage and background had been so casually dismissed!”
She continued:
“I’m pretty sure Neville Lazarus currently in Odessa, Zein Ja’far who is heading back for his second stint in Ukraine plus Dominique Van Heerden, just recently back from her trip would all take exception to your assertion as, along with being among the best operators in the industry and highly experienced in hostile environments, they’re all contributing massively both on and off air!
Given the excessively high number of journalists who’ve been killed and injured in this war, including our own colleaques, no-one but no-one believes this is an environment which is anything other than hugely challenging and dangerous – and for which you need to be more than adequately prepared. If you believe there are individuals in our newsroom who’ve been overlooked then that’s a different issue. But I’m not convinced it’s a diversitv issue.
I guess we all have to be careful about making assumptions both on and off air and continue to strive together as a team to be inclusive as well as develop, attract and retain staff of all backgrounds.”
Rashid’s critique was pretty rash, given – as Guido’s source points out – many don’t think they should be taking lectures from someone who brought the channel’s reputation into question when breaking lockdown rules just weeks after joining the company. Maybe he’d be happier in HR…
Official new SNP diversity guidance clarifies that “a tendency to set fires, a tendency to steal”, along with voyeurism are not to be classed as mental impairments, and therefore these groups are not entitled to “reserved places” on its Scottish Parliament Regional candidates lists. A damning blow to the already under-represented arsonist community...
The party’s hilarious new “equalities mechanism” – brought to light by WingsOverScotland – is a particular blow to Scotland’s oldest native population, those with an “Addiction to alcohol, nicotine or any other substance”, who are also set to miss out on the party’s diversity spots reserved for women, BAME, disabled and LGBT candidates.
Tattooed and pierced individuals don’t count as having “severe disfigurements” either, threatening their candidacy ambitions. Luckily, Sturgeon may fall under the category of having an impairment which has “a substantial adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities”, given all the bullets she’s shot into her own foot over the last fortnight…
Read their equality guidance in full below:
After Guido’s recruitment call for a foodbank’s £62,000 diversity director, one fed-up MoD staffer gets in touch to point out the department has just closed recruitment for a £110,000 director of diversity and inclusion, all while the defence budget is under constant threat and during sustained cuts to their conventional forces. It seems Ben Wallace has taken YMCA’s ‘In the Navy’ to heart…
Far from this extortionate wage being a one-off, the Ministry of Defence has dozens of well-paid woke warriors responsible for diversity scattered around the country; and one of the responsibilities of the new £110,000 Westminster-based role is to “Complete recruitment of expanded Central [Diversity & Inclusion] team”. Guido’s source claims the team recruitment target is 20 highly-paid civil servants focusing on, amongst other things, increasing LGBT representation in the department…
The MoD has been busy woking up behind the scenes without a diversity director, recently posting an internal diversity and inclusion blog that tells civil servants:
“If we want to be the best Armed Forces, then the only way to go is Feminist… And there’s also stacks of writing about the importance of feminist thought and analysis when it comes to conflict and peace”
It seems the first duty of the Government is to afford protection to its citizens promote the importance of feminist thought and analysis… I don’t know what effect they will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
As a result of the pandemic crushing businesses many readers will be having to retrain. As a result Guido thought he would highlight this plum job going at food charity the Trussell Trust, the mission to stop UK hunger, apparently requires a “Director of Diversity and Inclusion”. This seems pretty straightforward, “treat everybody the same”, that will be £62,000 please. You can work from home, so you can probably just put the advice up as an email auto-response.
According to the advert in The Guardian, candidates must be:
“Highly expert in the discipline, and able to clearly articulate complex concepts such as power, privilege, bias and intersectional injustice, you will ensure that our organisational perspective on these issues reflects the most considered and comprehensive thinking. The ability to identify and realise shared ‘quick wins’ that capture and signpost our direction of travel will be a distinct advantage. …”
How this woke nonsense helps people in need of food parcels, baffles Guido…
