Liz Truss and the government are playing a dangerous game when it comes to equality

Editorial: The party seems content to create and exploit grievances to try to get ahead

The minister has vowed to focus on geographic disparities (Getty)

In a quiet corner of Westminster, the minister for equalities, Liz Truss, detonated something under the decades-long efforts towards ending discrimination.

In an almost casual remark during a keynote speech, she summarily dismissed the whole notion of equality in pay, educational achievement, social status and much else among the groups most grievously discriminated against. 

Ms Truss could not be accused herself of lacking ambition, albeit aimed in the wrong direction. Citing her target of achieving equality based on “Conservative values” – a glorious oxymoron – she pledged that equality will now be “about individual dignity and humanity, not quotas and targets, or equality of outcome”.