Does His Majesty’s Government have a policy on civil servants wearing fetish clothing in the workplace? It’s not the sort of question you’d expect to find in the rather mind-numbing list of written inquiries asked by members of the House of Lords. But Baroness Jenkin, who is still waiting for her answer to that question, was at it again this week: she wanted to know if Keir Starmer’s administration considered ‘Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism to be a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010’. Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing?
If you think this bust-up is something that can only happen in the civil service, think again
With no context or background to these queries, many people were baffled. Why was the good Baroness suddenly asking these questions? Was there a ‘pup’ in the Treasury, or maybe a dominatrix in Defra? A Leather Quango Queen?
One possible theory has now emerged.
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