GB News presenter Stephen Dixon certainly didn’t hold back any punches as he grilled Shadow Treasury Minister Gareth Davies about the Tories’ criticisms of DEI initiatives. During Thursday’s visit (March 13) to the London studios, the 51-year-old welcomed the MP onto the program to discuss the Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion initiatives pushed by Labour following Donald Trump’s second term in office.
However, the Tories have been very critical of the time and money spent on DEI training and imitative in the current economic climate. Moments into the heated debate, Ellie Costello pointed out one of the Conservative’s biggest issues with DEI while they were in power for 15 years. She began: “Looking at your record, under your rule the government equalities office expanded, reports that civil servants spent thousands of hours on DEI training and spent £27.1million on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion initiatives.
“You’re now attacking Labour for this but these policies grew under your government, didn’t they? Why didn’t you take a tougher line when you had the chance?” The politician immediately shut down that line of questioning, simply replying: “We can talk about the past all you like, we’re not in government anymore, we lost the last election and Labour is in power now, told Daily Express.
“But it is right that organisations like the FCA have come out and said that they’re going to drop their plans on DEI and I think that’s important. We want the FCA, the financial regulators to be focused on economic growth and not on other initiatives.
“It’s a fair challenge but we have new leadership now and we’re moving forward and challenging this Labour government to make sure that all of these organisations are focused on the right thing which is growing our economy and making sure that we’re as competitive as possible.
“Unfortunately, the budget last year is undoing that work for the Labour government right now”. It was at this point that Stephen pointed out the contradictory argument, as he argued: “But the problem is, especially with the position the Tories are in now, you’re wanting to rebuild trust, that’s really important.
“But you can’t help but look at this and say, ‘Do as I say, not do as I did.'” The government minister replied: “Like I said to you, we lost the last general election, we’re moving forward under new leadership and it’s important to hold the government to account right now. We can talk about the past all you like but today is worrying a lot of people.”
The broadcaster insisted: “Forgive me, but is that an admission that you got it wrong when it comes to DEI?” Determined not to concede, Gareth argued: “We got a lot of things right in government, we got some things wrong.
“I think there was a creep in DEI across the civil service and while we were battling other crises such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and other things and focus on in government growing the economy which we did, perhaps other things didn’t get as much attention as they should have done.
“But right now, we’re the official opposition and we need to hold Labour to account. They’re in power now and it’s important that we do our official responsibility, our official job to make sure that people across the country are paying more tax, debt is going up, we have to hold them to account”.
It didn’t take long before fans flooded to X – formerly known as Twitter – to share their complaints about the MP’s ironic complaints. One user penned: “Indeed he is! 14 years of Tory govt, during which DEI grew in govt institutions unopposed. Only now, when they are no longer i govt, do they realise it’s a terrible idea? Really?”
Another agreed: “Always the same with these a***holes!! 14ffff years with a large majority and all Boris did was s**t up the wall. Traitor,” as a third simply wrote: ” “We have to bring DEI to an end”.
