Pursuing diversity and quotas in the jobs market leads to mediocrity - Bernard Ingham

I think I am entitled to comment, having been born into the 1930s’ regime of selection in which I failed. I made a mess of the 11-plus and never went near a university – only night school at the tech.

I started work at 16 and managed to hold down jobs on four newspapers before meeting the demands of half a dozen cabinet ministers and then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her press secretary for 11 years.

Only Tony Benn fired me – for giving him unpalatable advice – before taking me back immediately I told him, urged on by John Smith, a future Labour leader, that he was being unfair.

After all that I made a handsome living in retirement on radio and television and the public lecture circuit.

And I can honestly say that I applied for only one of those jobs – my first on the Hebden Bridge Times in 1948. Otherwise, I was invited to higher things.

In short, selection never did me, a workingclass lad from the sticks, any harm at all.

Contrast this with today’s fads. Who controls our education system, our national institutions, many commercial organisations and even the RAF?

Why human relations (HR) departments with a mission to produce a society hamstrung by their woke nonsense.

The result is that diversity, inclusion and gender dominate hiring and – perish the thought – firing, unless, that is, you exercise free speech and offend some snowflake.

You are then out on your ear until, if you are lucky, some brave tribunal months later finds you were treated unfairly.

The very idea that character, ability, experience and attitude will get you everywhere has flown out of the window. That is why universities are giving preference to the “disadvantaged” over public school types, thereby reinforcing the failed “comprehensive” system of secondary education.

I do not assume that an expensive education necessarily produces the best. But has it not occurred to these HR dopes that if they want to give the disadvantaged a leg up in this world they should be campaigning to improve the standard of primary, junior and secondary education?

And a fat lot of chance there is of that in view of the performance of the education unions during and since the pandemic.

We shall not help ethnic minorities or women by tweaking the jobs selection system to boost their numbers.

Nor will we do anything to improve race relations or equality of opportunity for women and girls. It will just breed resentment on the part of those candidates who feel let down own by the system’s bias.

I am all in favour of ethnic minorities and women getting top jobs. That is a sign of a mature society.

But it will only work for the benefit of a multi-cultural society if they prove their value in terms of ability, experience and resilience.

If they don’t, then resentment will grow and we shall hear more and more those awful words: “he only got it because he was black”. Or “she only got it because she was a woman”.

We now have another problem: the overseas recruitment by universities of foreign students paying premium fees even to the extent that they are taking more than half available places.

At the same time, we are making it harder for domestic students to find a place by trying to clamp down on grade inflation.

This is quite apart from the serious question as to whether our national interest is served by welcoming students from China with open arms when inevitably their first loyalty is to the Chinese Communist Party. It is another example of how weak in the head our supposedly brainbox academia has become.

A nation faced with the economic and social problems confronting Britain needs to look after itself and its people far better than it has been doing.

We need an urgent revamping of national priorities – and not least in education and the jobs market.

The signs are encouraging whether we get Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as our next Prime Minister.

But I shall believe they mean business only if they let Suella Braverman and Kim Badenoch loose on the wet as witch-water wokerati.

If they do, I look forward to their re-equipping Britain with the attitude necessary for success: Otherwise, we are doomed to mediocrity and failure.