Suella Braverman – just handed the Shadow Education, Skills, and Equalities brief in Reform – has announced that a Reform government would on day one:
She quipped: “Yeah, I’m doing myself out of a job”…
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy has always been one to champion equality and diversity, often lamenting over the lack of BAME and female workers various industries. His passion for diversity led him to be invited to deliver a keynote speech for the launch of a firm’s black employees’ resource group in 2020. For which he received the princely sum of £2,050…
Guido took the time to see what Lammy had to say on equality considering he may well be the next Foreign Secretary. It appears his love of getting women into work goes so far that he himself actually refuses to hire any men. He admitted:
“I just had a role in my office that I advertised, and because of the nature the economy, I got 250 applications. I don’t mind saying that I ruled out every man on the list and that was because I was determined to get a woman.”
Under the Equality Act, employers cannot discriminate against anyone because of their sex. Ruling out male applicants for a job just to “get a woman”, therefore, is not just “positive discrimination.” Noticeably, the vast majority of Lammy’s parliamentary staff who don’t already work for the Labour Party are women…
Kemi Badenoch was deployed this morning to sell the Tories’ new pledge to change the law and clearly define “biological sex” in the Equality Act. After 11 days of being benched in the campaign, the Business and Trade and Equalities minister didn’t depart from her usual robust answering style…
When quizzed on the Today Programme on what paperwork (original birth certificate or recently changed) one would need to access a women’s crisis centre or female prison, Kemi didn’t clarify, merely repeating that “biological sex” was what mattered in the law. When pushed further on what legal paperwork was required, a frustrated Kemi hit back: “I’ve answered the question, you just keep repeating it in a different way.” Meanwhile on Sky News, Kemi was asked why the government hadn’t changed the law already. The cabinet minister blamed Sunak’s snap election: “Unfortunately the election was called before we would have been able to lay the legislation out in September”…
The day after Starmer U-turned and refused to blame Trump for the war Rachel Reeves told the Mirror:
“Obviously no sensible person is a supporter of the Iranian regime, but to start a conflict without being clear what the objectives are and not being clear about how you are going to get out of it, I do think that is a folly and it is one that is affecting families here in the UK but also families in the US and around the world.”