The woke and the left

Part 1/ Diversity and its discontents

The most diverse and disastrous government in modern British history (CREDIT: THE TIMES)

This is the first of two essays on tensions between woke politics, for want of a better word, and left-wing values.

Next week I will look at how an emphasis on victimhood can stand in the way of change. But prompted by Labour’s plans to appoint a “Diversity Tsar” – and I swear I haven’t invented that ominously autocratic title –  I will start with identity politics. As ought to be obvious after the successes of Trump, Modi, Le Pen and Orban, identity politics in their nationalist and religious guises suit the right and far-right. Leaving aside the appeal of national and sectarian identities to every reactionary movement since the counter-Enlightenment, liberal diversity initiatives may produce justice for individuals but are no guarantee of social justice.

I hope to make that point by beginning with a grimly instructive fiasco….

On 6 September 2022 the Conservative party gave the United Kingdom its most diverse government ever. Not one of the four great offices of state was held by that personification of all that is regressive in the modern world: the straight, white, middle-class male.

Liz Truss was the new prime minister.  The home Secretary (or interior minister, as non-British readers would say) was Suella Braverman, whose Indian diaspora parents emigrated to the UK from Kenya and Mauritius. The chancellor of the exchequer (or finance minister) was Kwasi Kwarteng, the son of Ghanese parents, and a member of the West African diaspora which is reinvigorating British conservatism. As was the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, whose mother came from Sierra Leone.

The left-wing Guardian was impressed.  “This is a remarkable change – and one that sounds an alarm for the Labour party, which has never been led by a woman, and never had a person of colour in any of the four great offices of state,” it declared as it wagged a scolding finger at the opposition.

As it was, Truss’s rainbow coalition delivered the male, pale and stale Labour party an enormous poll lead, which looks like carrying it through to victory at the next general election.

For the Truss government was not just the most diverse in British history it was also the most disastrous. It tried to enact a Reaganite programme of borrowing money to fund tax cuts for the wealthy based on the magical and, for Conservatives, convenient belief that reducing the tax burdens on the rich would guarantee economic growth. In short order, the Truss administration caused a collapse in the pound, a money market revolt that forced up interest rates, and the near bankrupting of the pension industry. On 20 October 2022, Truss resigned.

I do not dispute that the promotion of women and ethnic minority politicians to the most powerful positions in the land was indeed a milestone worth noting. But the significant fact about them was not their sex or ethnicity but their class background and dangerously giddy ideology, which all but wrecked the country. If you want to play diversity trumps, you would have to admit that a random selection of middle-class white guys would have done a much better job of governing Britain.

The philosopher Susan Neiman argues in her latest book “Left is not woke” that the best strategy is not to play at all because reducing people to  sexual, racial or religious identities is anti-progressive, and, frankly, stupid.

Diversifying power structures without asking what the power is used for can simply lead to stronger systems of oppression, she says before quoting Todd Gitlin’s argument that if you make race or sex your prime identity you confuse grand passions with minor irritations.

On this view, the goal of politics is to make sure your category is represented in power, and the proper critique of other people’s politics is that they represent a category that is not yours … Even when it takes on a radical temper, identity politics is interest-group politics. It aims to change the distribution of benefits, not the rules under which distribution takes place.

I think that thought can be expressed more sympathetically. I understand why people would think it more profitable to work within existing power structures than wait for a socialist revolution that never comes. Diversity is a classical liberal value, however loudly its left-wing supporters may object to that description. Like the French revolutionaries of 1789, supporters of diversity want careers open to talent. If Western societies remove obstacles that stopped women taking senior jobs or men and women from ethnic minorities meeting colour bars, then that is an advance in individual freedom and a triumph for individual justice. But not necessarily for collective justice.