Smug and useless

Purnell's rapid rise up the slippery pole to Cabinet is via the typical route of the New Labour ruling classes. Privately educated, he left Oxford for a stint as a researcher at a leftie think-tank. Then, despite having no commercial experience, he joined the State Broadcaster as Head of Corporate Affairs, no less. After leaving for few years in the Spin Dept. at No 10 he landed a safe seat in 2001 and is now our Work and Pensions Secretary.

So he it is, with a working life full of pushing at half-open doors, never knowing dissent, a fully committed apparatchik whose place in the pecking order has been reached through unmitigated success at preaching to the converted... he it is who assures Labour's Black Asian and Minority Ethnic AGM that minorities will not be "left behind" by the effects of the recession.

And to make sure this won't happen, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, under its Chairman Trevor Phillips, has agreed to work with the Government to assess whether any groups were suffering disproportionately in the recession. They talk about assessing the impact on, "ethnic minorities, women, the disabled and older workers and advis(ing) ministers on steps to take."

What a load of bollocks. The clue is in the venue. At best, he's buying votes through cosying up to the immigrant population by reinforcing their sense of victimhood; at worst, he's promising extra help to everybody except fit white men. Either way, this smug, slippery member of the Nu Ruling Elite is so far divorced from reality that he'll say anything rather than do anything. And that's how we got into this whole mess in the first place.