Thread by @MForstater

It is well worth watching and reading Liz Trusses speech in full from yesterday

conservativehome.com/parliament/202…

Her focus is on the conservative values of liberty, agency, and fairness, and on moving the equality agenda out of identity politics and into the geographic inequality.... and literally moving the Equality Hub up North so the decisions are outside of the London bubble.

However you judge the authenticity or effectiveness of conservative commitments and policies on inequality, there is lots in the speech to like, and the degree of influence of the arguments that we have been making is unmissable.

She begins:

"It is the notion that in Britain you will have the opportunity to succeed at whatever you wish to do professionally…

…that you can be whoever you want to be,

…dress however you want to dress,

…love whoever you wish to love

…and achieve your dreams.

This echoes the wording of JK Rowling's tweet, went a year ago

Several times she emphasises that they will be

"concentrating on data and research, rather than on campaigning and listening to those with the loudest voices."

I'm sure someone has read @mbmpolicy 's paper on policy capture

euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.33…

I hope this also means that her advisors have also slogged their way through the response to it by Cowan et al

euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.336…

And also read MBM's response to it

euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.336…

Here is my summary of the key points of that debate, which illuminated how the Equality Act is misunderstood and misrepresented by those who argue that it guarantees males the right to undress in women's changing rooms based on gender self ID

a-question-of-consent.net/2020/11/14/los…

She talks about "The failed ideas of the Left" and what she means is postmodernism

She talks about schools of thought and specifically Foucault; ideas of

"no objective view – truth and morality are all relative"
" a preference for symbolic gestures"

She notes their harmful unintended consequences....
turning a blind eye to practices that actively undermine equality "failing to defend single sex spaces, enabling & tolerating anti-semitism or the grooming of young girls in towns like Rotherham"

Throughout the speech & the Q&A she is clear about the protected characteristic of sex

In the Q&A she emphasises "everybody is in a protected characteristic because the PCs are sex and race "that includes both men and women " and white and black people

She notes the failure of evidence that unconscious bias training improves equality- and said it will no longer be using it in government or civil service.

She rejects "no debate" and "stay in your lane""

the "... school of thought says that if you are not from an ‘oppressed group’ you are not entitled to an opinion… and that this debate is not for you. I wholeheartedly reject this approach.

She calls for "an equality agenda that is driven by evidence."

"To make our society more equal, we need the equality debate to be led by facts… not by fashion.

Time and time again, we see politicians making their own evidence-free judgements."

I hope her colleagues in the Women and Equality Select Committee are paying attention.

They have been given a wealth of evidence

They need to stop asking the witnesses whether they believe "trans women are women"

fairplayforwomen.com/wesc-gra-inqui…

She calls on the Equality and Human Rights Commission to enforce the law and saws the new commissioners are

"committed to equality and ready to challenge dangerous groupthink."

"EHRC will focus on enforcing fair treatment for all, rather than freelance campaigning"

Evidence, openness & transparency are not right wing or left wing policies. They are things we should hold govt to

The left needs to close the open goals it has left by succumbing to "misguided, wrong-headed, ultimately destructive ideas."