As the United States contends with its own Equality Act — a radical progressive bill which, if enacted, would hijack the legacy of civil rights by expanding the legal definition of sex to include gender identity in federal anti-discrimination law — the United Kingdom is realizing some of the problems associated its own Equality Act (2010).
Liz Truss, the Women and Equalities minister and secretary for International Trade, said earlier this month that the real inequality burdening people is geographic and economic, not identity politics, as the Left would have it. In a speech delivered to a British conservative think tank, Truss complained about “failing to protect single-sex spaces, hard fought for by generations of women” and further noted that “study after study has shown that unconscious bias training doesn’t improve equality” which is why the government is abandoning it. She said:
These ideas have their roots in post-modernist philosophy pioneered by Foucault that puts societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavors. In this school of thought, there is no space for evidence as there is no objective view. Truth and morality are all relative. Rather than promoting policies that would have been game changing for peoples’ lives, like better education and business opportunities, there was a preference for symbolic gestures.
It is worth noting that, according to the latest Ipsos-MORI poll, the Conservatives have a 6 percent lead on the Labour party among the working class. Increasingly, it seems that identity politics is an elitist luxury.