Sir John Hayes has taken his support of the ‘Britain Uncancelled’ campaign to the pages of the Daily Mail.

In a scathing rebuke of wokeism in the Mail, Hayes, Conservative MP for the South Holland and The Deepings constituency in the East Midlands, is demanding the government stops funding what he refers to as ‘woke zealots.’

Chair of Common Sense Group

Hayes is chair of the Common Sense Group, a group of 50 Conservative parliamentarians, which stand for “authentic conservatism.” The anti-woke group was set up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests. The consortium seeks to push the government in a more hard-line direction on a number of “culture war” issues.

The group supports a new campaign movement know as ‘Britain Uncancelled’ and its efforts to ‘defund cancel culture.’

Britain Uncancelled Campaign

Launched on October 11, the campaign has been set up with the aim of ‘cancelling cancel culture’, which the project describes as “breeding fear and paranoia in our workplaces, politics … at our children’s schools and even in our homes.”

In a blistering attack on “politically motivated doom-mongers”, the knighted MP used his column in the Mail to demand to know why Whitehall departments granted ‘huge sums of money’ to groups that were ‘entirely hostile to British values of fairness, open-mindedness, mutual respect and reasonableness’.

The MP’s crackdown on cancel culture begins by condemning the Imperial War Museum for, as Hayes writes, its “bizarre and grossly disrespectful” spectacle of ending its Remembrance Sunday silence with a ‘woke’ rap, which “attacked Winston Churchill.”

According to Hayes, activists vie for attention by shouting louder than ever. But the MP’s real gripe is the Civil Service, which is, apparently, allowing “these politically motivated doom-mongers access to vast sums of precious public money that, once secured, is spent to deride and divide us.”

Stonewall rant

The MP continues to rant about Stonewall, the largest LGBT rights organisation in Europe. The Stonewall Diversity Champions programme is dedicated to ensuring all LGBTQ+ staff are free to be themselves in the workplace. The programme works with over 900 organisations in the UK.

In August this year, it was revealed that between 2018 – 19 and 2020- 21, Stonewall received over £3 million in taxpayers’ money. 

Taking exception to such money being pumped into a cause dedicated to ensuring a workplace welcomes, respects and represents all employees, the anti-woke MP makes claims that the Stonewall project has been disowned by some of the LGBT community and even many feminists.

Singling out the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), Hayes shares his resentment over the funding going towards Shout Out UK, a non-partisan social enterprise, with a mission is to strengthen democracy by providing training and programmes on media literacy and political literacy.

The Common Sense Group chair proceeds to have a dig at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which he claims was awarded considerable funding to a project on ‘White Supremacy and White Saviours’ in young adult fiction.

Haye’s dire voting record

The Daily Mail contributor’s voting record cannot be ignored. He has consistently voted for a reduction on welfare benefits. A staunch Brexiteer, Hayes votes against more EU integration and for a referendum on the UK’s membership in the EU.

The MP has also voted against equal gay rights, including the prohibition of homosexual doctrine in school.

Sir John Hayes has also been critical of climate change policies. Hayes, who served as an energy minister in David Cameron’s government, even joined calls to restart fracking. The MP recently criticised the government’s plan to initiate a ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars, claiming the delay would enable “fossil fuels to become even cleaner”.

In October, openDemocracy revealed that the Conservative MP has been paid £150,000 working as a strategic advisor for BB Energy.

The Eurosceptic MP, who received a knighthood by Theresa May in 2018, is also the president of a company that runs a school for women in Saudi Arabia. Since May 2018, Hayes has been president of the Highbury Burton Saudi Arabia, which operates the International Technical Female College in Jeddah.

The MP’s jobs reportedly net him around £417 and £555 an hour.

The Daily Mail’s publishing of an article promoting a campaign waged by anti-woke insurgents and authored by a public figure with a dire voting record and associated with different lucrative side jobs that net him a huge salary, has fuelled derision. As one commentator wrote in response to the Mail article:

“What a non-story. Stop fuelling hatred DM. It’s tiring. Do more to unite people. Do better.”

The Daily Mail’s publishing of the column is also testimony of how right-wing establishments are weaponising cancel culture and waging war on wokeism.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a freelance journalist and contributing editor to Left Foot Forward.

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