There’s a reason Liz Truss chose to blame society’s ills on ‘identity politics’ in her speech this week
Spare a moment for Liz Truss, minister for women and equalities, whose literacy and numeracy skills were apparently damaged by being educated about discrimination. “While we were taught about racism and sexism,” she claimed, reflecting on her childhood schooling, “there was too little time spent making sure everyone could read and write”.
It was a sentence that encapsulated the spirit of her flagship speech this week: misguided efforts to tackle entrenched bigotries against minorities hinder efforts to address the basic needs of the majority. It’s clear that the Conservatives intend to encourage resentment of those who advocate equality to further stoke a culture war. But there was another key takeaway from the speech: the chutzpah of a British right that has spent a decade stripping away social provision now claiming that the left is fixated on “identity politics” at the expense of class-based inequalities.
