Opinion: Rishi Sunak appointing ‘minister of common sense’ to combat wokeness is ludicrous, says Secret Thinker
Published: 05:00, 22 November 2023
What’s next, a Minister for Soft, Furry Animals, or maybe the Python boys had it right all along - perhaps it’s time we had a Minister for Silly Walks.
What new level of political madness has led to the appointment of a cabinet minister tasked with combating Whitehall ‘wokery’?
The Prime Minister has said he hopes Esther McVey will speak ‘common sense’ for the Government regarding social issues.
Now, I usually avoid politics like the plague, but surely this is ludicrous in the extreme?
Why would she have a monopoly on common sense? Shouldn’t every member of the cabinet office be using good sense and sound judgement in all they do?
Of course, she hasn’t always been a GB News presenter and has held several ministerial roles before, working for three previous PMs - Boris Johnson, Theresa May and the now Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
And, will His Majesty’s opposition be equally determined to have one of their key members displaying sound practical judgements by appointing a shadow common senser? Perhaps we’ll even get a Lib Dem Woke, though surely that must be a tautology.
On the face of it we’ve reached a new low point where politicians are so fearful of upsetting one person or another, they’re too terrified to express an honestly-held opinion.
This appointment of a ‘plain-speaking northerner’ has been seen in some quarters as a move to appease those sitting further to the right in Mr Sukak’s party, but he may possibly be playing another card as well.
Having seen the reaction to his own experiment at expressing a common sense view at the party conference, where he waded into the transgender debate by saying: “We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense”, he may have decided it’s expedient to let someone else define common sense in future.
Perhaps more worrying than anything else in this sorry saga, the person I find myself agreeing most with is Jacob Rees-Mogg when he says: “I think silly titles for government posts is a Blairite thing.
“That is not the proper business of government... this is ridiculously tokenistic, it won't impress anybody.
“I think having a minister for woke is silly and I think it's deeply regrettable.”
On that note, I’ve decided I’ve now come full circle and would like to recommend making the remaining members of the Monty Python team into Lords and invite them to form a Government.
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