While the await their next battering the Conservatives have filled their days composing attacks on political correctness - or 'political correctness gone mad', in the mandatory modern usage. But the Conservative Party can't get a secure grip on modernity. It neither likes nor comprehends the country. If it did, it might grasp that political correctness can provide a solid defence for reactionary policies.
New Labour is smarter.
In 1997, Harriet Harman made a nonsense of her life's work when she enforced a nasty proposal left over from the Major administration to cut the benefits of single mothers. Government cheerleaders told me that criticism of the great feminist was 'sexism', even though she was assaulting the poorest women and children in the land. Keith Vaz has tried the same manoeuvre. We have learned that questions about his desire to spend his time with billionaires facing criminal allegations about their role in the greatest corruption scandal in the history of independent India revealed his inquisitors' 'racism'. The admirable belief that colour, creed, gender and disability should not limit human freedom has been perverted by skilled operatives to restrict the freedom to debate and monitor.