The revelation in The Spectator last week that the Treasury is more concerned with boosting its DEI outcomes than hiring people who can count, was – for those who have served in our blessed civil service – shocking but not surprising. But the truth is that this numeracy story is not a wacky aberration or an isolated case. It is, to quote Dominic Cummings, ‘the system working as intended’. Let me explain.

The dominance of DEI ideology in recruitment to some of the most powerful roles in the state has long roots, going back to the Blair era. As I’ve reported before, the main graduate internship scheme for the civil service excluded middle-class white applicants until very recently. But BLM further deranged the mandarin mind.

This is an absurd way to run the state, and the absurdity has consequences

This is an absurd way to run the state, and the absurdity has consequences

The collective hysteria over the unfortunate death of a man in faraway Minneapolis was not, of course, limited to the public sector. Who can forget the absurd spectacle of companies and individuals performatively posting blacked out squares on social media, with accompanying messages like ‘We stand together with our black colleagues and customers’ (Sainsbury’s). But the public sector embraced the BLM age with unparalleled fervour.

I recall that in June 2020 the Foreign Office’s most senior decision-making body, ExCo, was busy considering a paper on how it should respond to what it described as the ‘growing concerns’ around George Floyd’s death. Naturally their deliberations were to be guided by the presentation they would receive from representatives of the ‘FCO Bame Network’........

© The Spectator