The central criticism of the Conservative Party over the last 14 years has been that it did one thing and said another. This was exemplified by the headlines generated during Priti Patel’s tenure as Home Secretary: “PRITI: SEND IN THE NAVY TO TACKLE MIGRANT CRISIS”, “UNVEILED: NEW HISTORIC BORDER CONTROLS”, and “PRITI: ASYLUM SEEKERS TO BE SENT OVERSEAS” — all whilst she presided over the Boriswave of unprecedented immigration. Before he entered No.10, Dominic Cummings proposed abolishing permanent secretaries and said the concept of a permanent civil service would become “an idea for history books”. Despite him becoming the Prime Minister’s chief of Staff, the permanent Civil Service is, of course, unchanged and in the rudest of health.

Whilst conservatives must be in office to implement their vision, we all know it isn’t enough. Power in Britain and the United States is widely diffused, and the number of people in positions of authority hostile to conservative aims is legion. Nobody has forgotten how the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Judiciary and the Civil Service all tried to block the results of a national referendum.

So why are we suddenly falling for the lie that over in America, Donald Trump, the not-yet-President, has somehow defeated the “woke mind virus” because some big companies have dialled down their DEI initiatives? It’s classic right-wing short-termism to interpret this as anything other than corporate America paying homage to the court of The Donald ahead of his inauguration.

Has wokism corrupted every facet of public life or it is so weak it has been defeated before Trump takes office?

Sure, BlackRock is leaving a Net Zero initiative and Meta is scrapping fact-checkers. But last year, the U.S. State Department earmarked $3 billion to “advance gender equity and equality worldwide.” and the federal budget allocated $11 billion for the Department of Interior to “preserve the stories of the cultures and history across America.” In the corporate sector, the DEI industry is worth billions, and its training programmes, consultants and diversity officers are embedded across Fortune 500 companies. The US education sector, as we all know, is nearly totally overrun. The University of Michigan alone spends more than $30 million on 241 DEI staffers. The woke mind virus is far from defeated. Savvy bosses are just adapting to the new climate whilst they wait for him to get bored and find something else to attack, like Greenland or Keir Starmer.

If Trump really goes for woke, some in the grievance industry will abandon ship and pursue normal jobs, but many true believers — those who view DEI not just as work but as a calling — will stay strong. Consider the reaction from Meta employees when Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would scale back its DEI initiatives. Lots of angry and crying emojis poured into the internal message boards in reaction to the news. They really believe in this stuff. We often call “wokism” a religion, yet we rarely follow this thought to its logical conclusion. If it really is a faith, it doesn’t just have creeds and catechisms: it has zealous adherents who won’t surrender without a fight. How can we claim that wokism has infested and corrupted almost every facet of public life whilst simultaneously believing it is so weak that a not-yet-President has defeated it by sheer force of personality? We should expect adherents to build priest holes, meet in catacombs, and beat their plowshares into swords, not to quietly retreat and don MAGA hats. They only need to wait four to eight years for the Democrats to win the Presidency again, and then they’re back in business. 

But it’s the end of woke! Ah yes. Because the Republicans will kill (and have already killed) the woke mind virus. They will rule America forever, and no company will ever be able to re-subscribe DEI initiatives, decry whiteness, or pursue Net Zero ever again.

Of course, the Department of Government Efficiency might save the day, removing the cancer of Critical Theory from US institutions (by removing the bulk of US institutions) and education reforms might entrench the values of Martin Luther King, rather than Ibram X Kennedy. They might cut Government funding for anything and anyone that hates America and all will be well. I’m a cynic, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this, but I seriously do wish them the very best in their endeavour, and it isn’t as if Elon Musk hasn’t defied expectations time and again (As long as he hasn’t fallen out with Team Trump before the inauguration). I just think the problem is more ideological or religious than just monetary. More Japanese Knotweed than Japanese Empire, and and that makes it far harder to defeat, especially when you consider the fact that any education reforms, even if completed on day one, would take at least ten years to have any effect on the US workplace.

I do hope they succeed, but let’s just not kid ourselves into thinking anything has happened just yet.