Why DEI won’t die

Woke is dead – or so Piers Morgan would have you believe.

Morgan, arguably Britain’s most famous broadcaster, has just published Woke Is Dead: How Common Sense Triumphed in an Age of Total Madness. The book celebrates the ‘collapse of the most ridiculous ideology in human history’, which Morgan argues has been defeated by nothing more than ‘common sense’. He cites the re-election of US president Donald Trump and the UK Supreme Court’s rejection of trans ideology, among other recent events, as proof of its demise.

But if Morgan is right, then someone clearly forgot to tell the UK’s vast bureaucracy. In Whitehall, woke hasn’t been defeated. Not even remotely.

While some corporate HR departments might be binning their rainbow lanyards and diversity consultants, Whitehall and local governments continue to pour millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the woke bureaucracy. These jobs haven’t disappeared. Rather, they have found a permanent home in Britain’s public sector.

The first full audit of Whitehall wokery, covering the 2023-24 financial year, revealed that the civil service spent a staggering £27million on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) staff and projects in a single year. That’s £27million that didn’t go towards funding schools or providing tax relief. Instead, it went on seminars, workshops and staff networks dedicated to preaching a fashionable ideology.

The bulk of this spending came from salaries, with EDI staff across departments earning an average of £53,000 a year. To put that into perspective, that is 41 per cent higher than the UK’s median gross annual salary. In total, £20million was spent just on the pay packets of diversity officers. Another £4.9million went on ‘activities’, such as ‘learning and development sessions’, while £700,000 funded EDI ‘staff networks’.

The profligacy doesn’t stop there. At the local level, the picture is even worse. Last year, a TaxPayers’ Alliance investigation found that local councils had almost doubled their spending on woke jobs over just three years. Between 2020 and 2023, spending on these roles hit a total £52million across the UK’s nearly 200 local councils. That’s £52million of taxpayers’ money spent on roles that deliver no tangible benefit to residents.

Even councils teetering on the edge of financial collapse have found room in their budgets for diversity bureaucrats. Birmingham City Council advertised for an ‘assistant director for community services and equality, diversity and inclusion’, the year before it declared itself bankrupt.

Birmingham is far from unique. Across the UK, councils that can barely balance their books are splurging on ‘diversity champions’, ‘inclusion strategists’ and ‘equity leads’. These are pointless, luxury positions that should not be paid for by the taxpayer.

The truth is that woke is living on, albeit quietly, entrenched in its bureaucratic stronghold. While it may not hold the level of control it once did, it’s still a line item in the public accounts. While politicians posture about fiscal responsibility, taxpayers are footing the bill for seminars on ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘microaggressions’.

Woke will survive until we have a government that is prepared to root it out from the public sector. Which is to say, it won’t be defeated anytime soon.

William Yarwood is the media campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance.