Liz Truss’s war on identity politics doesn’t go far enough

The concept of equality has been redefined, at least according to the minister responsible in a speech last week. But on closer inspection, the government has still not unshackled itself from all the entrenched assumptions of the more collectivist understanding of fairness. Liz Truss’s speech marked a break from identity politics, with its pernicious division of society into victims and their oppressors, but it left untouched two other linked ideas.

The first is social determinism: the idea that outcomes such as poverty are the result of social and economic forces beyond individual control. The second is faith in the ability of government to transform these external forces. Both ideas leave little space for personal responsibility and ignore the power of individuals to succeed against the odds.

The government wants to encourage individual agency but Truss repeatedly assumed that outcomes such as unemployment and low income are the result of barriers to human agency.