This tweet from Antonio Romeo, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, sums up the priorities of the ‘modern’ UK Civil Service.


Ms Romeo was previously Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Trade and has been with the civil service for over 20 years - joining after working at a “strategic consultancy firm’ for just 3 years. Her tweet, you’ll note, is cc’ed to various other departments, quangos and MPs, all remunerated by the UK’s growing mountain of public debt.
The Tweet shows just how committed to inclusion the UK Civil Service is, apparently. But it’s selective inclusion, of course. The rainbow flag, more than ever, is about trans rights. Men and women, straight and gay, who used to identify with the Pride flag have now been side-lined. Government ministers, keen to identify with this new-variant of identitarianism and rights-demands are reluctant to define a woman or a man. And flying the pride flag above a government building symbolises the government’s and civil service’s support for ‘rights’ for an ever-narrowing definition of the oppressed. It’s estimated that less than 1% of the UK adult population is trans. Yet trans rights now pretty much define the UK civil service’s public ‘lines’ and social media virtue signalling.
Rainbow flags, woke messaging and ‘diversity’ training, are pretty much what IS the modern UK civil service. It’s all part and parcel of an increasingly enervated administrative elite which prioritises identity politics above everything else. The values that used to unite the United Kingdom (hard work, success, raising a family, contributing to local communities) are seen as quaint, old-fashioned, even bigoted. The only virtue in town (and especially Whitehall) has precisely nothing whatsoever to do with public service. Because the public is a problem getting in the way of diversity.
Meanwhile, of course, the cost of the machinery of government mounts, aided and abetted by the recent lockdown mantras. Most civil servants still choose to work from home most of the time. The cost of the UK’s bloated public sector and quangos continues to be funded by eye-watering fiscal deficits and ever-growing public debt - now standing at around £2.4 trillion. The guts of £1/2 trillion of this was squandered to pay for lockdown ponsi schemes that effectively eviscerated much of the small and medium business sector. Many small business owners were forced out of business because of government mandated removal of their markets. Money printing required to pay for the folly has devalued the pound and resulted in huge asset price inflation. Now inflation is galloping into consumer prices as interest rates ramp up. NHS waiting lists are at grotesque levels, the cost of living is crippling the poorest and taxes are being cranked to pay for arrant government and civil service stupidity.
But, meanwhile, the pride flag is hoisted across empty government buildings across Westminster. Permanent secretaries, SPADs, government ministers seem utterly oblivious as to why this might be just a tad insensitive.
The writing is on the wall, though. I sense that the Civil Service and the rag-bag collection of public sector waste might just have reached the apex of woke. A reckoning is coming. This was very neatly illustrated in the recent by-elections where the Conservatives suffered major defeats. The noteworthy thing about both by-elections was that in both constituencies Conservative voters didn’t even bother to vote. They essentially gave up. There was, simply, no-one to vote for.
Our 2022 mainstream political parties provide nothing and offer nothing to the voting public. Isolated and brain-washed they appear to think that what we want for this country is represented by the “pride” flag and virtue signalling about diversity. What we actually want, I’d suggest, is some humility from those who are supposed to be providing a service to us - as our nominated servants. We’ve had enough of this.
Yes, it is the obsession with this issue to the exclusion of all others-the welfare of the people in terms of their actual health, employment and education.
Of course if we can be distracted then they don't need to deal with the issues which concern people. The inaccessibility and lack of accountability of many MPs and civil servants has come as a shock to me.