I watch what's happening in the United Kingdom a lot. Part of that is out of a sort of morbid fascination for what's happening to the nation that was once, as I often describe it, America, Original Recipe. Part of it is because much of my ancestry can be traced back to the British Isles, from Ireland, Scotland, and England.
And, part of it is because what the woke Labour government does in the United Kingdom is watched with envy and hope by the American left, who would duplicate the policies that are destroying the once-Great Britain. They would love nothing more than to repeat the UK's mistakes, and so, we watch the UK and wait.
Here's the kind of things we should be watching for: The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), their equivalent of our (much more robust) War Department, is now placing "woke" requirements on defense contractors, and these are well to the left of stupid.
Defence firms must agree to woke conditions such as 'fighting climate change' before they can clinch multi-million-pound deals from the Ministry of Defence, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
In the latest outbreak of Whitehall wokery, the MoD requires companies seeking cyber defence contracts to 'tackle eco-inequality' as part of the agreements.
The contracts are governed by 'key performance indicators' that were quietly published on Christmas Day and are dictated by the department's 'social value model'.
Priorities include 'wellbeing' and 'economic equality', and if suppliers do not meet them, they face having their contracts ripped up, being 'named and shamed' and even disqualified from future work.
This is a perfectly ridiculous notion. Defense contractors, even if you spell them as "defence" contractors - seriously, Britain, get with the program - should be as narrowly focused as the military members they are making arms and equipment for. This is all about the mission, and their mission is to build the very best arms and equipment for His Majesty's forces. Nothing else matters. The employees and management should have only that one priority, and they should only be hired and retained on their ability to get the job done, instead of worrying about all manner of woke horse squeeze. These people should certainly not be worried about climate change. Even if climate change was the crisis the left claims it is, their work is more important than anything else, for the survival of the nation.
The Tories have responded harshly.
On Saturday evening, Alex Burghart MP, Tory Cabinet Office spokesman, said: 'Across Whitehall, billions of pounds of public contracts have been quietly captured by a woke agenda.
'While our adversaries are rearming, Labour has made 'tackling eco-inequality' a key performance indicator for defence contracts.
'It is completely unserious and at this rate, we'll end up with Net Zero defences.'
While that's a neat turn of phrase from MP Burghart, we can appreciate his concern.
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Here's the thing: These lunatic wokeness requirements aren't just limited to the defense industry.
But it isn't just defence contracts where these KPIs have raised eyebrows. The politically correct rules account for 10 per cent of ministers' decisions over which suppliers to use.
Farming companies must employ '50 per cent women or non-binary staff', and education suppliers should have a 'zero gender-pay gap'.
Meanwhile, sub-contractors working in export financing have to show '33 per cent multicultural representation' in their advertisements – compared to the national average of below 20 per cent.
And the Home Office even demands that asylum guards must provide 'customer satisfaction with cultural sensitivities'.
So, if we take this as written, this means that agricultural concerns, in jobs that frequently require heavy lifting, dealing with large and possibly dangerous animals, and hard physical labor, must be staffed by at least 50 percent women or "non-binary" people? That's nuts. And finance companies are somehow expected to retain subcontractors that have a higher percentage of "multicultural representation" than the population at large? Why? Even demanding they duplicate the percentage of the population at large is silly and wasteful, but almost twice that?
Oh, and that last one, that's a real howler. The Home Office is insisting asylum guards - that's immigrant asylums, of which modern Britain has an ever-growing number - have to worry about cultural sensitivities. What sort of cultural sensitivities? You mean like ignoring grooming gangs while they prey on young British women? Those kinds of cultural sensitivities?
Britain has gone barking nuts, and it may be too late to turn back.
The one real hope here is that all this egregious stupidity will boost Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, which may represent the UK's last hope for some kind of return to sanity. But these kinds of things tend to be ratchets, not dials, and it's hard to see a way back for Britain now. Mr. Farage, please, please, please prove me wrong on this.
We watch Britain, once more, because as much as we look at feather-headed nonsense like this and deride it, American Democrats and the far-left (but I repeat myself) look on these policies with envy and greed. They want to duplicate them here. Make no mistake about that. This is the template. And this is why we watch what goes on across the Atlantic.
