There is no such thing as positive discrimination. There is only discrimination — and when it creeps into life-or-death professions like policing, surgery or flying a plane, it stops being merely unjust. It becomes dangerous.
That lesson ought to be obvious. But in modern Britain, it seems it still needs spelling out — especially after the latest revelation from West Yorkshire Police (WYP).
As the Telegraph revealed earlier this month, the force had been ranking applicants not by ability, experience or potential — but by ethnicity. According to one whistleblower, candidates were being sorted depending on their skin colour.
A clumsy medal system for modern identity politics: gold for black and far-east Asian candidates; silver for South-East Asian; bronze for white applicants, including Irish and Eastern Europeans.
The so-called ‘oppression olympics’ is usually a glib online phrase, but here it has been given official form. It wasn’t just metaphorical — it was policy. All of this, in a country struggling to get a grip on rising crime.
We have seen record levels of mobile phone thefts in London. We have experienced what can only be described as a shoplifting epidemic. And to cap it all off, knife crime continues to soar in parts of the country.
And yet, even as criminals operate with near-impunity, some forces appear to be more concerned with assembling a Benetton advert than arresting burglars.
This isn’t new. In 2017, Cheshire Police rejected the application of Matthew Furlong, a physics graduate and son of a police officer, despite him being told he was “well-prepared“. He didn’t tick the right boxes. He was white, male and heterosexual. A tribunal later ruled he had been unlawfully discriminated against under the guise of ‘positive action’.
No institution is immune — not even the Church of England. In 2021, the CofE published its ‘From Lament to Action‘ report, setting an ambitious target of 30% UKME participation — despite ethnic minorities making up just 18% of the British population in England and Wales. The timing was no accident: the report was commissioned in the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. Never mind that church attendance is at record lows. Winning souls for Jesus was apparently less urgent than assembling a demographically-balanced congregation.
The same logic now pervades policing. Recruitment is no longer about competence or calling. It’s about hitting quotas — often entirely divorced from whether the relevant groups actually want to join in the first place.
Following the revelation, WYP put out a statement arguing that “the most recent census found that 23% of people in West Yorkshire identified as being from an ethnic minority background. Our current police officer representation from ethnic minority backgrounds is around 9%.”
But this line of argument misses the point entirely. It assumes representation should always directly mirror the population — that any discrepancy is evidence of failure or injustice. It ignores the many reasons certain groups might not choose to join the police in the first place. And it treats complex questions of trust, culture and vocation as little more than a spreadsheet problem.
The obsession with identity, imported from the worst corners of American HR culture, has turned recruitment into an ideological beauty pageant.
Take United Airlines, which in recent years outlined its goal that at least 50% of the 5,000 new pilots it trains should be “women or people of colour” by 2030. Admirable in theory, perhaps — but less so when you’re 30,000 feet in the air and the only thing that matters is technical competence.
Nobody checks the diversity metrics of their surgeon when they’re being wheeled into theatre. They care about whether their surgeon is the best.
Nobody cares about the ethnicity of the pilot landing their plane in a thunderstorm. They care about whether the pilot is capable.
And nobody being mugged in broad daylight on a British high street wants their attending police officer to reflect the exact demographic contours of modern Britain. They simply want their phone back.
The purpose of the police is not to be a social experiment in representation — it is to safeguard the conditions of civil life for all, regardless of their background.
Yet the tragedy of EDI policing is that it does precisely the opposite. Far from bringing people together, it plants the seeds of resentment. It tells applicants in the so-called bronze category that no matter how talented or dedicated they may be, they will always be less desirable than someone in gold. And worse, it burdens those in gold with the suspicion — however unfair — that they are there for optics rather than excellence.
What is left is a police force divided, demoralised and distracted — a hollowed-out institution where merit takes a back seat to identity, and where the very people tasked with protecting us are sorted and judged by their surname or skin tone before their skill.
In policing, as in medicine or aviation, there is only one standard worth defending: the best person for the job.
Once you start discriminating — ‘positively’ or otherwise — the outcome is always the same. You get discrimination. And in life-or-death professions, that’s not just wrong. It’s unforgivable.
Daniel Fessahaye is a freelance business journalist and a political commentator with Young Voices UK. Find him on X.
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100% concur with Daniel. Whatever the job or course, the criteria to be met should be standardized for all. Therefore no matter your sex, ethnicity or other personal characteristics, the benchmark looks exactly the same for one and all. This way nobody gets any favourable treatment but also no-one can complain about being discriminated against. This is what ‘equal opportunities’ amount to, after all. If you don’t make the grade, tough. Simple as that. This is the only way to ensure you get the best person for the job and people are recruited on merit alone.
So, not to be awkward here, but a genuine question:
Would the Israeli People be happy for Netanyahu to be replaced by an Ethnic African Catholic, or a Muslim, Hindu or Ethnic Oriental Chinese, for example, representing the Jewish Israeli People on the world stage, and infiltrating their military?
Based upon “merit” alone?
So the answer to assumed racism, is to start discriminating against people based on their skin colour – if its white!
I can’t help the skin colour I was born with.
I’m sure I’ve heard that refrain before!
Off-T
Massive power outages across Spain, Portugal and parts of France.
Aye, aye, what they up to now?
https://www.politico.eu/article/huge-blackouts-cripple-power-supply-in-spain-and-portugal/
Telegraph reporting, “The power networks in Spain were in a race against time on Monday afternoon to restore electricity before sunset, when solar generation is likely to cut off a third of the country’s power source…”
…Modern nations levelled down to stone-circle dependency on sun gods.
Meanwhile, “Portugal’s grid operator REN said that ‘extreme temperature variations’ had produced a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’ that caused the cuts. ..”
…De nada, senors y senoras – All accounted for by “The Science.”
That would be the ultra rare BS phenomenon?
Nice one.
It woz the Rushyans wot dun it.
Wait for it.
You sure it wasn’t Trump?
Ironic how the nation that led the abolition of slavery, liberally issued citizenship of the home country upon the break-up of empire, and over the last decade has granted entry to millions of foreign workers, students and migrants…
…Gets branded institutionally-racist by left-wing self-appointed moral guardians playing the DIE card. Best man or woman for the job every time. No other way to run country, business, police force or professional sports club.
No, I disagree. Best person with ancestral homeland ties to Britain every time.
“No other way to run country, business, police force or professional sports club.”
A very well-written expression of my views! I want people to be appointed on merit. Skill set over skin tone every time for me.
Daniel also makes the point seldom heard in the MSM that some ethnicities are scarce in certain occupations because they simply do not find the jobs attractive to them. The same applies to gender too, of course. How many times do you hear women complain that rubbish collection is dominated by men, or Arabs complaining that there aren’t enough Muslims involved in pig farming?
And, more controversially… if you want the workforce to truly represent the diversity of the local population, you’re going to have to lose a lot of care workers in the community. Artificially created diversity targets can be quite a handicap to society, if applied without discrimination. Better not to have them at all.
The labour market operates the same as any market in an economy, buyer and seller exchange something to obtain something each perceives as being of higher value than that which he gives in exchange to the other. Both are better off, wealthier – that is how wealth is created.
No buyer would knowingly pay for something of less value than the money handed over.
So it is with employers – they want best value for money. In the event an employer lets prejudice influence his decision and he doesn’t employ best value for money – he suffers a loss. Very few in business would do this.
Of course in the public sector where there is no profit motive, no share holders just taxpayers who suffer any loss and they don’t matter, normal market forces do not operate.
Time to return the public services to the competitive, private market sector where they belong, where they were before successive Governments over the last 150 years took them over.
So-called “positive” discrimination distorts the labour market in the same way subsidy and regulation distorts the market for goods and with the same result, overall we are less well served and poorer.
As soon as the powers that be force the Premier league to have the correct quota of white british lads I will believe they genuinely think this is a serious matter. Until then though……
BTW, I am not holding my breath!
Hear, hear!
I disagree with this Third World Ethnic view of discrimination in the UK, which the author says should not be based on “skin colour” but only merit, pretending to support the human rights of the Indigenous People of the British Isles: the English, Welsh, Scots, Irish and their descendants around the world, whose ancestors have lived in these islands for more than a thousand years, and built it into one of the world’s greatest nations in history.
Fessahaye is an Eritrean name, specifically of the Tigrinya people, who have an admirably egalitarian society of their own in Ethiopia, and appear to be mostly Orthodox Coptic Christians. I am quite sure that his own people in his own ancestral homeland of Africa would never want Blond Swedes, or Ethnic Indian Subcontinentals, or Ethnic Orientals from China, or Brazilian natives, to be given top jobs in his tribe, representing his people on the world stage, or his people on their sports teams, or their police forces or military.
Why not? Is it because of their skin colour? NO. It’s because of their ethnic identity, their “Tribe”, their ancestral homeland. Tribalism is perfectly natural, preferring to live and work in peace among your own ethnic group, your own people, your own Tribe to which you have genuine loyalty. It’s how humanity have managed to survive for thousands of years. It is not a “hate crime”.
So no, the World’s Smallest Ethnic Group, Ethnic Europeans, who now comprise only 7% of all the people on the planet, must not be forced to accept people into their Tribe based only on “merit”. Would the English rather have all-English football teams, whether they win or lose, or winning teams composed mostly of Third World Ethnic players, rendering the competitions utterly pointless? How can we cheer on our own players in our own teams when they are no longer there?
“Will England still be England without any English People in it?”
I love em but sometimes they are just too beautiful.
“And in life-or-death professions, that’s not just wrong. It’s unforgivable.”
The same applies to professions which are not life-or-death.
Why should someone who has, for example, spent decades learning to play the violin to an exceptional standard, with the aim of becoming lead violin in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, be downgraded in order to give the job to someone less talented but with a darker shade of skin?
The C of E policy suggests that we have to convert the Hindus and Muslims to make sure we have the correct colour diversity.
That’s what the Muslims do