OPINION
Leftie commentator Ash Sarkar has seemingly performed a U-turn on wokery (Image: BBC)
Want to know what’s wrong with wokery and identity politics? Most of us don’t need to be told. We understand instinctively it’s all about dividing people into different groups of “oppressors and oppressed” and making them despise each other like a pair of roosters in a cock fight.
But sometimes you need a more intellectual explanation. Well, here’s what a guest said on The News Agents podcast last week when asked what damage identity politics has caused: “First it puts everyone into this position of competing over who can be the victim… Instead of looking at people as potential allies, you’re looking at them through the lens of ‘well, what are you going to do to me’.
“So, it stops you from being able to work together… It is a separatist logic. So, it says that unless you are Bengali, Muslim, female, whatever, you’re not going to be able to understand my experience. In fact, you’re probably out to do me harm.”
Hear, hear. What a very commendable sentiment and what a super demolition of one of the core pillars of wokery: that we must judge people, not as Martin Luther King so brilliantly put it, by the “content of their character”, but instead by the colour of their skin, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference or disability.
It’s the sort of comment I’d be proud to make myself, sporting my finest conservative and anti-woke hat. In fact, it’s pretty much what I’ve written here many times over the last few years.
But that makes it all the more surprising that the person delivering this wokery-buster was none other than Ash Sarkar, the Corbynite-supporting, “libertarian communist” Guardian columnist, ranked 45th on the New Statesman’s Left Power List.
Yes, it’s the very Ash Sarkar who is at the vanguard of what I call wonky-wokery, and who once claimed “the presence of white people automatically means the presence of racism”.
This, therefore, is a big deal. Because if even radical lefties like Sarkar turn against the excesses of wokery (if you’ll pardon the tautology), then the whole edifice comes crumbling down. All we need now is Owen “Communism is back, baby!” Jones to join her and we can declare complete victory.
Frankly, though, the fabulous signs that we have passed peak wonky wokery have been with us for a couple of years. The U-turn on a rapist who claimed to be a woman being sent to a women’s prison. The Cass Review, leading to a ban on prescription puberty blockers. The ban on male swimmers and cyclists competing in female categories.
Wes Streeting breaking ranks with his boss by telling us that “men have penises, women have vaginas”. Numerous American organisations declaring an end to DEI initiatives.
In short, common sense is breaking out. Sure, we’ve got a way to go. But we’re travelling in the right direction. The woke mob can’t complain about this. They over-reached by a country mile, what with all that white-guilt-TERF-cisgender-microaggression-decolonisation preaching. They have a brass neck, if ever I saw one, to moan.
Of course, Sarkar should get little credit for repeating what many of us have been saying and writing for years, often copping a load of abuse for our troubles.
But, as we know, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, and all that.
If Sarkar has seen the light, then we should indeed rejoice, even if some of her comrades are horrified at her desertion.
And can we finally say that there is light at the end of that dark, woke tunnel? It’s not over yet of course. But, yes, and it feels great to write it, the battle is slowly being won.