Before an idea qualifies as bad, it has to pass through a series of tests, but Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, bunked those exams and mysteriously still passed.
Basically DEI DEI’d its way into the public realm without the necessary reviews, and this explains why it will be painful to strip, and why the US – despite an executive order – has four years of intense battle ahead, as forces loyal to or dependent on the idea seek all manner of subversive reinvention.
In the UK, it has enjoyed two decades of political enthusiasm. To say nothing of South Africa.
The model of UK DEI is interesting because the chances of eliminating it sit between difficult and impossible – between America and South Africa. The UK doesn’t actually know where it came from, or when, but looking for where it isn’t today in the UK is like searching for a child’s lost balloon using Google Earth. To examine what it can achieve, the case of the Conservative party and one its MPs refers.
Just after 1am on the 28th November 2021, the sleepy Welsh village of Llanblethian was wakened with an almighty boom. When residents peered outside the windows of their little stone cottages, they saw a wrecked Mercedes Benz that had ploughed into a pole. Some walked out to the scene. The driver of the car had fled.
Whispers
Later that day, word of the accident started trickling into Westminster, with whispers claiming that the car belonged to a Conservative MP, Jamie Wallis, who lived near the little village. The party quickly formed ranks, as Wallis had been privately suspected of being unwell for some time, and a little task force was assembled to try to control the information flow. But few of those seconded to this group knew Wallis personally. They were parliamentary aides, researchers, and bag carriers – not versed in responding to what was to come.
The first thing that came was revelations about Wallis’s sexuality and how it may have played a role in his crashing the car. At once the group thought: the Conservatives have a dazzling history of gay members getting excited and doing stuff, so this shouldn’t be difficult. Unfortunately for them, the issue wasn’t quite so vanilla as gay. Not that they knew immediately, but what the group were dealing with was a situation akin to that of former Conservative MP Stephen Milligan.
In 1992, Milligan’s secretary got worried that he wasn’t answering his phone, so she popped over to his house. There, she discovered the MP sitting at his kitchen table, no longer alive, dressed only in suspenders, with a stocking tied around his neck and a satsuma stuck in his mouth. Stephen had tried his hand at some autoerotic asphyxiation, and he had expired.
A few days after the accident in Wales the group was informed that a co-ordinator had been appointed to marshal them. This was a bossy HR-type woman – as they always are – and she called a discreet meeting. “First,” the woman sent by party HQ said, “I’m going to tell you what happened to Jamie Wallis MP. Then I’m going to tell you how we’re going to respond.” She cleared her voice and eyed the group of white men surrounding her.
WiFi
“Jamie Wallis MP crashed his vehicle into an electrical pole and destroyed the village’s WiFi…”
One of the group sniggered. She turned to him.
“I’m sorry,” the woman looked up from her notes and addressed a man standing nearby, “is something funny, Arthur?”
Arthur shook his head. The woman wallowed a little in his humiliation before continuing.
“Right, as I was saying. The village’s WiFi was destroyed, and Jamie fled the scene of the accident. He fled because he was in a state of distress, and decided to walk back to his house two miles away. He was wearing a mini-skirt with sequins, and high heels.”
The woman looked up again, her eyes darting around hoping to catch a smile forming on the lips of the men surrounding her.
“On the way home, he rested on the side of the road five or six times because it is difficult to walk on tarmac in high heels…and he has a knackered knee from an old squash injury…”
Someone blurted out something, then tried to disguise it with a cough. The woman wasn’t having it and put down her notes.
“Jamie needs compassion. The next person who thinks this is a joke will be asked to leave. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!”
Silence.
“So the way we’re going to handle this incident is as follows: Jamie is a trans. I hope that is clear? Jamie. Is. A. Transgender. Now, thank you for your participation, any questions, let me know, have a pleasant day further”.
The woman left the room and the group of men stared at their shoes.
“I am transgender”
On the eve of his court case, Jamie Wallis duly announced that he was transgender: “I am transgender, or I want to be”. He went on to say that he had crashed the car because he had been raped at some point in the past, explaining that a male date he had met online refused to wear a condom, he objected, and things escalated from there.
Quickly the conviction of dangerous driving and leaving the scene of an accident – alongside the judge’s conclusion that he “could not find the defendant credible” – were relegated as his parliamentary colleagues and the media rushed to congratulate him. Boris Johnson, amongst others, commended him for his bravery, and the party took no further action.
DEI had passed a major hurdle. In the two decades it had permeated through British public life, it had wrecked families and friendships and rejected qualified candidates from work prospects. Those whom it propelled upwards it had embittered. It had emboldened a parasitic corporate marketing frenzy – people who felt it divisive were told to bank or shop elsewhere, their names placed on secretive lists with a note to monitor “enthusiasm”.
DEI wormed its way through government institutions and regulators, and enquiries were launched in its name – invariably all resulting with the same recommendations: more of it is always, always required.
But now it had been upgraded into immunity – a sort of fashionable elitism to ward off those annoying things called cause and effect. And who knows where it goes from here.
The villagers had to wait seven weeks for people to come and fix the WiFi.
[Photo: Jamie Wallsi/X]
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