Top DEFRA Civil Servant’s Lefty Race Politics Revealed – Guido Fawkes

Top DEFRA Civil Servant’s Lefty Race Politics Revealed

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The charity boss now heading up DEFRA has claimed “all societies are racist” and has a highly political history. That’s what happens when you hire a trendy lefty charity honcho…

Paul Kissack stepped down as group chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week to take up his new position as Permanent Secretary at the environment department. He brings his philosophy to the department including that “all societies are racist.” Struggling farmers will be thrilled to hear that no doubt…

In a long essay for the JRF Kissack claimed all racism “is structural and institutional” and everyone is racist if they like it or not:

“all societies are racist to some degree. And it is less about individual behaviour or thought and more about systems in which individuals live: we have all grown up in structures and institutions that foster racism to some degree – we could not avoid that and cannot be blamed for it, and we cannot avoid it shaping our views and how we see the world.”

In the same missive the new permanent secretary – who must now remain strictly politically neutral – praised Black Lives Matter and said “the opposite of racist is not ‘non-racist’, it must be ‘anti-racist.’” New guidance for DEFRA civil servants inbound…

Kissack later put his name to a joint letter from charity bosses which attacked the a landmark report finding a lack of “structural racism” in the UK. On the political front Kissack has been calling for more benefits to be handed out this year. In 2022 he attacked Sunak and the Tories, saying “the UK’s poorest people have been utterly abandoned by this ideological chancellor.” He will be more at home with his Labour ministerial colleagues – while Kissack was CEO of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Foundation funded a project with Labour Together, the Starmerite house think tank. Friend of the show…

Kissack’s appointment to replace Tamara Finkelstein follows DEFRA second permanent secretary Nick Joicey’s secondment to the Blavatnik School of Government over in Oxford earlier in the year. Presumably he’s not able to chat all things DEFRA with his wife the Chancellor over dinner any more…