Esther McVey is minister without portfolio in the current cabinet, but has been dubbed the ‘minister for common sense’. In this capacity she made a characteristically half-baked, half-thought-through address earlier this week. There is apparently to be no more spending on external equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) contracts without explicit sign-off from a minister, and no more EDI-focused Whitehall jobs outside human resources.
This supposed stern crackdown is an admission that all of this harmful claptrap has ripped through the institutions, virtually unopposed
This is the latest minor spectacle in the death throes of this clapped-out government. It’s taken them 14 years to notice that they’ve been utterly useless. This supposed stern crackdown is an admission that all of this harmful claptrap has ripped through the institutions, virtually unopposed, during their time in office. Minister for common sense? McVey is more minister for stable doors, the shutting of.
Sending an erstwhile GB News presenter out to wind up progressives with vague talk of common sense feels pathetically perfunctory from the Tories – as if they can corral their lost ‘gammon’ voters with a few scraps of cold red meat. It’s the kind of contemptuous gesture that only increases people’s distaste for them.
This applies across the board. ‘Common sense’ also sends progressives into paroxysms. They hear it and their ears prick up because they view it as a flimsy cover for terrifying right-wing opinions from 1954. Hilariously and incredibly, they still think the Conservative party is from this era – yes, the party of mass immigration, money printing, and billions poured into wasteful nonsense.
The use of the phrase ‘common sense’ in politics remains in general, I’m afraid, a red flag. I cringe when I hear a politician say it. It usually feels like a signal that someone is trying to sneak something past you. It’s just ‘common sense’ to do net zero, to let men assume the rights of women on their whim, to lock the country down and crash the economy. It is used to create a false sense of consensus, to try to remove a subject from scrutiny. ‘Everyone agrees – it’s just common sense.’
Tellingly, following McVey’s speech – and referring in particular to her attempted crackdown on NHS lanyards bearing the Pride rainbow – Labour’s Ben Bradshaw wrote, ‘Pathetic and retrograde. Being LGBT is not a “view”.’ But he is doing the exactly the same thing here – attempting to suggest that the highly contentious symbol of a political movement shouldn’t be debated. Because to Bradshaw – never the brightest sparkler in Labour’s fireworks display – the rainbow is not political, it’s just common sense.
Promoting sex changes for children, or encouraging men to use women’s facilities, are not sane ideas. But they have slipped through, in part, because of the misuse and overuse of the phrase ‘common sense’ by politicians. When people hear ‘common sense’, they mistrust their instincts. They think experts in these fields must know what they’re doing, because surely nobody would be barmy enough, would lack the common sense, to set these things in motion without thinking?
Now, thanks to McVey’s stumbling crash of a press conference, we have the NHS lanyard wars. This has inevitably led to the grim spectacle of NHS staff, Labour MPs, Carol Vorderman and the like, posting photos of rainbow lanyards with simpering expressions. Nurses and GPs are reassuring the ‘LGBTQ+ community’ that ‘you’re safe with me’. As a veteran of hospital visits to gay men dying from Aids in the 80s and 90s, I might well have appreciated such a gesture – when it mattered. But even back then, I recall a high degree of professionalism and compassion from NHS staff. I never felt ‘unsafe’. McVey has gifted these Johnny-come-lately narcissists with a golden opportunity to preen.
I confess I find it pretty much a base standard of NHS workers that they aren’t going to be homophobic. I don’t enter a hospital on high alert. It’s rather like having a badge saying ‘You’re safe with me – I’m not an axe murderer’. Yes, I would jolly well hope not.
All this situation required was a little memo saying that no symbols other than the NHS logo are to be used by the NHS – simple as, end of. But no – there had to be a big ‘common sense’ song and dance, and then an almost immediate retreat into squeamish fudge. In other words, a typical late-Tory pile-up.
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