I swear it’s not PC gone mad to change the Scouts’ oath

Now I don’t want you to get me wrong (you’re always doing that, and frankly it’s beginning to get on my nerves): political correctness can be a serious evil. In many American universities, for example, an attempt has been made to suppress ideas and opinions by declaring them “incorrect”. The failure to have a serious debate about this country’s immigration policy is another example of the damage political correctness can cause.

When not actively evil, PC behaviour can be absurd. For instance, the insistence of some spokesmen (usually male) that they be referred to as “spokesperson” is ridiculous.

The PC crowd can also be curiously selective. After several days of a Guardian website debate entitled, unbelievably, “David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic”, one reader complained that the title was prejudiced. It should instead read: “David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man or woman anti-Semitic.”

So why my call for a ban on “it’s political correctness gone mad”?

Naturally, it’s a cliché and some people might be ready to join my campaign because of this. Yet while I am hoping to create a broad popular front, no one should feel left out, your membership card is in the post etc, etc, I haven’t actually got a problem with clichés. They usually capture a truth, a blindingly obvious, oft- repeated truth. I don’t mind that the phrase is a cliché.

My problem with “it’s political correctness gone mad” is that on more than half the occasions on which it is deployed it isn’t appropriate. It is attacking something that isn’t politically correct and hasn’t gone mad.

Insisting that a political orthodoxy is insulated from challenge is bad, inserting the words “and women” in every sentence may defy common sense, but this doesn’t mean that it is wrong to use different language or to reform institutions to reflect the fact that Britain is now home to many different ethnic groups, or that women demand and deserve the same rights as men. This is simply correct; political correctness has nothing to do with it. Some so-called political correctness is just good manners.

The latest target of the “it’s political correctness gone mad” brigade is the Scout movement.

The Scouts are allowing members to change the promise to do their duty to God and the Queen to reflect the fact that they may not believe in God (they may, say, prefer to refer to Allah) and that they may not be subjects of the Queen.

Lots of people are furious. My word, you wouldn’t believe how furious they are. This is the end, I’ll have you know, the end of everything that knits the Scout movement together.

Do me a lemon, honestly. Most of the people opining on this haven’t been near a Scout troop in decades, possibly ever. They last encountered the movement when watching Eric Sykes dressed in comedy shorts and a woggle and making unfunny dib-dib jokes. They haven’t got a clue.

I used to be a Scout leader. (There, I’ve said it). I helped to run a small Jewish troop, so I know that Scouting has always tried to accommodate ethnic minorities and that it’s not some great innovation. The change won’t weaken the Scout ethic one little bit. Indeed it may help ethnic groups to participate in national life.

The Scout movement is wonderful, trying hard to do a good turn for young people and finding it difficult to get the volunteers to run troops because everyone’s too busy, presumably writing “why oh why” newspaper columns. It makes me angry that the first time in years that the mainstream media has bothered to pay attention to Scouting, it is to attack the work of its tireless leadership for minor and perfectly reasonable reforms.

It’s political correctness gone mad gone mad.

Euro spin wears thin

LET ME see whether I’ve got this right.

The Prime Minister wanted a more integrated Europe, he was keen to join the single currency and he was hot for the new European constitution.

Now it has become clear, even to him, that joining the euro is at best unnecessary and would, certainly for the foreseeable future, be economically catastrophic. The constitution is dead. The citizens of Europe utterly reject the Blair integrationist view.

In other words, the entire new Labour position on Europe, a central pillar of the structure, has collapsed entirely. The Britain in Europe pressure group, set up by all the leading figures in politics who were not William Hague, has been routed. It’s all over.

John Major’s theory that enlarging the EU’s membership would win us allies and make federalism impossible has been triumphantly vindicated.

Yet Blair is attempting to have us see the whole thing as a masterstroke that has established him as the leading political figure in Europe. And he has found a market for this preposterous piece of spin.

Unbelievable.

My No 1: Susie Doku

I AM delighted to inform regular readers of this column that last week I received a charming e-mail from a Ms Susie Doku.

O ye of little faith.

Mundane or born-again?

LAST WEEK I listened, open mouthed, to a radio phone-in show on reincarnation. Listeners were asked to ring up and share their experiences. Sceptics were, I’m afraid, thin on the ground. One caller after another told the host that they had lived at least one previous life.

I was hugely amused to note that in almost every case the old life had been full of drama, ending on the fields of Waterloo, or as a centurion at the time of Jesus. Nobody called to inform us that they used to be an accountant living near Swindon.

Come to think of it, if you’ve fought as a general at Waterloo it must be annoying to find that on your return to earth you are a minicab driver living in Epping Forest with time on your hands to phone LBC at drivetime.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

From July 6 Daniel Finkelstein’s column will appear every Wednesday on the Comment pages.

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