From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   If the Equality Act 2010 made discrimination illegal, then why we have   
   seen the rise of persistent and widespread discrimination against white   
   males across the public and private sectors?   
      
   Today, some form or other of anti-white social engineering can be found   
   in practically any institution you care to name. Famously in 2023, the   
   RAF, in a bid to make ‘the few’ even fewer, discriminated against 31   
   ‘useless white male pilots’ in a recruitment scheme. But we can add the   
   NHS, universities, all manner of coveted white-collar grad schemes and   
   internships, the Premier League, GCHQ and local councils. Or just take   
   what we’ve seen in the police. In 2024, three white officers were passed   
   over for promotion by Thames Valley Police because of their race; last   
   year, West Yorkshire Police temporarily blocked applications from white   
   candidates in a diversity drive; only last month, it emerged that two   
   male officers had been fired from a team by Suffolk Police on the   
   grounds of ‘operational reasons linked to gender balance’.   
      
   It seems that in multicultural Britain, some ‘protected characteristics’   
   are more protected than others.   
      
   It is welcome news, then, that Reform has this week announced plans to   
   scrap the Equality Act on ‘day one’. Suella Braverman, unveiled on   
   Monday as Reform’s new shadow education, skills and equalities   
   secretary, said Britain is being ‘ripped apart by diversity, equality   
   and inclusion’.   
      
   In her new brief, the former Conservative home secretary will take aim   
   at the equalities state and ‘build a country defined by meritocracy not   
   tokenism’. In schools, this will mean a ‘patriotic, balanced   
   curriculum’, where in particular Braverman has pledged to root out   
   transgender ideology in the classroom, including banning the so-called   
   ‘social transitioning’ of pupils. She also fired a warning shot at   
   universities, some which she says have ‘descended into hotbeds of cancel   
   culture [and] anti-Semitism’, rely on too heavily foreign students, and   
   ‘keep conning young people into worthless degrees’.   
      
   This is undoubtedly red meat for the base – Braverman’s Equality Act   
   proposals prompted the loudest cheers at Monday’s London press   
   conference – but it is important to be maximalist in principle. Previous   
   attempts from the right to take aim at the equalities bureaucracy, most   
   recently spearheaded by Kemi Badenoch as equalities minister, have   
   misfired by failing to address the problem at its philosophical root.   
   The problem is not just that EDI initiatives are costly make-work   
   schemes with little evidence base to them – it’s that the racial   
   gerrymandering they are trying to achieve is itself a bad idea.   
      
   ‘The problem with the Equality Act is not poor implementation’, explains   
   Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of campaign group Don’t Divide Us, ‘It is   
   that it embeds identity politics.’ Indeed, it was always telling that   
   despite Mrs Badenoch’s reputation as an anti-woke firebrand, presided   
   over the diversity bureaucracy as equalities minister – and created a   
   good deal more of it. Braverman, meanwhile, now in teal, wants to   
   abolish the equalities brief altogether.   
      
   There are important reasons the Equality Act has to be changed. For one   
   thing, it has encouraged untold vexatious complaints in the workplace. A   
   recent report by Don’t Divide Us found a seven-fold increase in   
   employment discrimination claims around race between 2016-17 to 2023-24,   
   despite just 5 per cent of claims being successful over the whole   
   period. The Act’s focus on personal identity and victimhood encouraged a   
   grievance culture, it found, which far from easing racial tensions was   
   only exacerbating them further.   
      
   In particular, it is the Act’s Public Sector Equality Duty and ‘positive   
   action’ wheezes which have made it a vehicle for systematic   
   discrimination against less politically favoured groups – whites and   
   men. While the Act outlaws ‘positive discrimination’, where minorities   
   are explicitly hired preferentially, it doesn’t outlaw ‘positive   
   action’, where minority groups get special outreach programmes, which   
   we’re supposed to think is fair and unobjectionable. But as those   
   would-be airmen know, this is really a distinction without a difference.   
   If you’re giving a leg-up to some groups to increase ‘diversity’,   
   you’re   
   not giving them to others. ‘Institutions should be held accountable for   
   treating people fairly rather than hitting artificial demographic   
   targets’, says James Orr, Reform’s new head of policy.   
      
   Necessary as it is, Reform’s anti ‘equalities’ crusade is sure to rile   
   the left. An unsubtle Guardian headline on the press conference   
   anticipates the line of attack: ‘Farage insults female reporter as   
   Braverman says Reform UK wants to scrap Equality Act.’ On Monday’s   
   Newsnight,a testy Victoria Derbyshire repeatedly grilled new shadow home   
   secretary Zia Yusuf over which particular discrimination protections   
   Reform was looking to scrap. In reality, though, while critics will no   
   doubt try to paint Equality Act reform as extreme, the policy hits a   
   healthy middle ground. Orr explains: ‘The Equality Act consolidated   
   pre-existing legislation on disability, sex and race discrimination.   
   Reform UK supports the predecessor legislation and unequivocally opposes   
   discrimination based on protected characteristics.’   
      
   It was Harriet Harman who introduced the Equality Act, in the death   
   throes of the Brown government. During the recent row over the Garrick   
   Club, Harman declared that, after her revolution, Labour’s idea of   
   equality is now ‘a recognised public policy objective’ – and what’s   
   more, that ‘all those in public life should be committed to that   
   objective’. But do ordinary Brits really share Labour’s dreams of a   
   totalitarian equalities state? I’d imagine not. It’s high time a major   
   party took a chunk out of it.   
      
      
   Laurie Wastell   
      
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