The religion of Diversity and the failure of the recent UK government

by philg

“Liz Truss has appointed the most diverse cabinet ever.” (Guardian, 9/7/2022):

None of the four most senior jobs in the British government will be held by a white man.

We are informed that Diversity leads to superior results and that this has been proven as a Scientific fact. “There is a wealth of research that says diverse teams perform better because each team member brings a different perspective to the table.” (NYT 2018). “Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter” (Harvard Business Review, 2019):

In recent years a body of research has revealed another, more nuanced benefit of workplace diversity: nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter.

So the Liz Truss government was more diverse and more intelligent than any previous British government. Science would have predicted high performance for this group. Yet the same folks who tell us that diverse teams are better says that the Liz Truss team was incompetent:

Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil.

Ms. Truss’s political viability had become tenuous after her proposals for broad unfunded tax cuts roiled markets and sent the pound’s value plunging. She suffered a grave blow on Monday, when her newly appointed chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said that the government was undoing the last vestiges of Ms. Truss’s tax proposals.

That announcement constituted one of the most dramatic reversals in modern British political history, and a humiliating repudiation of Ms. Truss’s leadership. In recent weeks, support for her Conservative Party had collapsed in opinion polls and unrest among its lawmakers intensified, undermining her ability to remain in office.

How do we maintain our faith in the religion of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion after this spectacular failure? Do we point out that not enough people on the Liz Truss team were members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community? (and do they have the “2S” over there?)

Speaking of diversity and “2S”, the Elizabeth Warren section of the Diana, Princess of Wales’ Memorial Playground:

Going forward, Britain will feature high tax rates and rule by white men? Here’s the new money guy:

16 thoughts on “The religion of Diversity and the failure of the recent UK government”

  1. From the Guardian article:

    “In 2001, 91% of Conservative MPs were male, and every single one of them was white.”

    Well, in 2001 the standard of living was higher in Europe, rents were low and the pension plans were considered secure. No one locked down the economy for a flu virus or threatened nuclear war with Russia.

    Free speech still existed and one was not threatened for “hate speech” posts on Twitter. Surveillance of the population was far lower. People were happier.

    Other than that, of course we know that 2SLGBTQQIA+ and white male elimination yields superior results. Brought to you by Netcraft, Harvard Business Review and the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

  2. Liz Truss’ big mistake was believing the Brexiteer fantasy that the UK remains relevant and a world power. Only the US has the privilege of running deficits to finance tax cuts and domestic consumption, as a side-effect of the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. That privilege is not afforded to the UK and as a result of this misstep it may even lose the ability to denominate its debt in its own currency (the so-called “moron risk premium”).

    The most likely successors are Rishi Sunak, a brown (Indian) man who used to hold a green card, and Boris Johnson, a white man (though 1/8 Turkish) who was born in New York and thus a US citizen for a very long time, until he discovered the joys of having to pay US capital gains tax upon selling his London flat. The Tory membership prefer Johnson, the Tory MPs prefer Sunak.

    Whatever happens, bring popcorn.

  3. By the way, Jeremy Hunt, like Mitch McConnell, is married to a Chinese woman (although he was not wise enough to marry into billionaires, unlike McConnell or Sunak). Does that count towards DEI?

  4. How long until we hear “Diversity is a good idea, but it was wrongly implemented”. The thing apologists of communism keep saying about it.

    • That will never happen. Saying so means admitting your mistakes. The blame will be placed on not enough funding: “Diversity is a good idea, but it is way underfunded”

  5. The world seems to be capitulating against smaller governments all at once. 250 years was about all any capitalist wave ever got, going back to roman times.

    • The history of diverse Secretaries of State in Washington from 2001 wasn’t particularly good, either.

      Truss failed at basic politics. Leading a government is not like writing a think-tank paper. Like all recent PMs she tried to behave like a President rather than a leader first among equals, but, unlike Johnson and Blair who personally won elections, she had no such mandate. Since only a minority of her MPs supported her plans, squaring the majority by including their leaders and dipping their hands in blood was essential. Having failed to do so, she might as well have been ordering the tides. Perhaps our gorgeous and wealthy new brown PM will exhibit more nous.

      The opposition, who voted for all but one of the controversial budget measures and whose plans inevitably include further unreconciled spending, has no better standing.

      Best Sunak cartoon this year (sadly no web link): a Conservative fund-raising garden fête featuring a “Guess how many coins are in Mrs Sunak’s coin jar” stand, with the jar towering over the Lilliputian fête and visitors.

      @Toucan, no PM since Blair (getting to be a longer list) has been knighted (or “Dame”d), although May’s husband was.

    • /df: “whose plans inevitably include further unreconciled spending”. Except maybe in some Asian countries and Switzerland, humans organized into a government seem to be incapable of accepting that they’re not as rich as they want to be. The mania for deficit spending is relatively new, however, (50 years?) so I don’t think that this can be considered a fundamental human condition.

      Maybe the answer is that politicians realized only relatively recently that they could become a lot more popular if they spent more than they taxed.

  8. It’s a fascinating point, but I’m busy this morning so I’ll have to save my longer Diversity religion comments for a later post. Truss and her plans had bigger troubles.

    I will say that in my vast lifetime I’ve had several female bosses that it’s fair to say were committed to Diversity and were also women. The difference for me, I think, is that those women didn’t want me to fail because I was a white male – they wanted me to succeed, also. One owned a retail computer store “back in the day” and she was a very intelligent Jewish woman. She hired me because I was young, a computer enthusiast with a lot of background knowledge, etc. She wanted her business to make money, have satisfied customers, make a lot of sales, get good tech. support with a friendly attitude, and compete successfully against the larger chain stores, which we did. I enjoyed working for her.

    The other was the law school Dean, who was an ardent “first wave” and some “second wave” feminist. At the time she was one of only seven (IIRC) female law school deans in the USA. She was a tough boss sometimes, but she was also generous, and compensated me very well. We had some moments where we chafed and conflicted politically, but I was loyal to her, worked hard, and at one point I was one of the handful of people she trusted and called a friend. She didn’t want me to fail, either, despite being a White Guy. And she *did* trust me – I had access to her work and sometimes her personal email accounts (when she was traveling) and, you know, sometimes I wondered what I was doing. But then I’d do a little Tom Jones impression for her privately (“She’s a Lady”) and we’d laugh about it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1LkiYKwnAk&t=3s

    There are people who could respond: “Yeah but you were just a tool in their grander plans, so you were fooling yourself.” Frankly, whenever you’re in a subordinate position regardless of gender that’s true to some extent, and that’s just how it works. The big difference, I think, is that neither of them wanted “diversity” to be a zero sum game, meaning that in order for someone to succeed, someone else had to fail – for ideological reasons. I don’t think that’s still true among a lot of 21st Century Diversity Disciples. And I knew one of those too, intimately.

  9. What are the actual achievements of Sunak? MBA at Stanford? Why did he quit Goldman Sachs?

    I’m always more interested what someone has done rather than his/her/zir/their degrees.

    But maybe I’m just biased because I’m getting Justin Trudeau vibes by looking at his public persona.

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