Simon Carr: PC is perfect for conservatives

The bill is meant to force women's wages up to men's. It'll do the opposite.

Political correctness might as well have been the invention of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the directors of Multinational Megacorp. It is the lubricant of the global economy; it has made possible the free movement of labour. It has been the single most effective way of keeping labour prices down. Look.

The working classes of different countries might be regarded as more xenophobic than their bourgeois rulers. They know that bringing in immigrant workers is the simplest way to curb wage rates. Without the cultural protection of political correctness, mass immigration – it could be argued – causes rioting, lynching and workplace fury.

Now that ethnic minorities enjoy legislated equality, there is a constant supply of labour drawn from lower-income to higher-income societies – and this prevents wages being bid up by the indigenous proletariat.

Unions used once to privilege the interests of their members over the unemployed and migrant labour. "Privileging" one group over another is anathema to PC. Unions couldn't stand up to the dynamic destruction that equality produces.

It was democracy that destroyed militancy. Requiring members to vote on strike action transferred power from professional agitators to members with mortgages to pay and children to feed. A brilliant conspiracy of businessmen and Tony Blair!

But how do you keep talented lower-class people at the bottom of the heap?

You would devise a system of education that values equality and solidarity more than academic achievement. You would call the old way of teaching children to read "fascistic" and introduce a new method that resulted in 25 per cent illiteracy. Young proletarians shouldn't be educated beyond society's needs. Any sense of resentment will be soothed by feel-good qualifications.

And if the young people conceive that their qualifications should allow them into university, this should be encouraged. But how to explain the lack of suitable places? Aha! The concept of "parity of esteem".

This extends equality theory by persuading students that the institution formerly known as Scunthorpe Catering College is now a university and is as good as Cambridge.

Let sixth-formers go there for three years to learn what they used to learn at school – and charge them top-up fees for what they used to get for nothing.

Which brings us to Harriet Harman's Equality Bill. She is legislating to make it compulsory for public organisations to do their own audits on gender pay rates. It has been resisted by the private sector. They sing the old refrain.

But this PC Act will yet become the single greatest boon to the company owners.

Harriet assumes it is going to force women's wages up to male levels. But it will do the opposite. It will merely bring men's wages down to female levels. "There's a recession on Terry, and Sheila's doing just as good a job as you for 30 per cent less, and her sister's looking for work."

"What the one with the enormous knockers?"

"Get out, you patriarchal chauvinist dinosaur! Sheena? You've got Terry's job, and who knows, in a couple of years we might be able to pay you as much as your sister."

And if you think that's incorrect you're just not political enough.

simoncarr@sketch.sc