This post was originally published on here
A staff member who served under Sir Keir Starmer‘s new civil service chief was told to join a ‘gender non-conforming book club’ as part of their annual review, it has emerged.
A civil servant was reportedly tasked with spending one day a week on inclusivity schemes when Dame Antonia Romeo led the Department for International Trade (DIT).
The 51-year-old, who has been dubbed Whitehall’s ‘Queen of Woke‘ by some, was this week named the new Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service.
The Prime Minister chose Dame Antonia for the powerful role after sacking Sir Chris Wormald just 14 months after appointing him.
She is the first woman to be the UK’s most senior civil servant, but her appointment came amid a bitter briefing war over past allegations of bullying.
Dame Antonia was previously the top official at the Home Office, while before that she was permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice and DIT.
The Telegraph reported, while Dame Antonia was in charge of DIT from 2017 to 2021, a staff member was set objectives to help raise ‘awareness and visibility of non-binary identities’.
The employee was told to spend up to 20 per cent of their time fulfilling inclusivity goals such as encouraging colleagues to display their preferred pronouns and ‘recruiting non-binary staff’, according to the newspaper.
As part of a performance review, the employee is said to have been set a target of joining the department’s ‘gender non-conforming book club’.
A source said members of the club read Middlesex, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides about an intersex American, as well as books about people transitioning gender.
Other tasks said to have been assigned to the employee included participating in ‘discussion of the non-binary corporate network’ and ‘challenging dated and discriminatory societal gender norms of expression, presentation, behaviours, roles or expectations that reinforce the patriarchy’.
Fulfilment of such objectives reportedly contributed 5 per cent to the civil servant’s annual performance appraisal.
The Cabinet Office strongly refuted a suggestion that the objectives were directly set by Dame Antonia herself.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman, this week criticised Sir Keir for appointing the ‘Queen of Woke’ to be the UK’s most powerful civil servant.
He claimed Dame Antonia is ‘the embodiment of all that’s wrong with The Blob’.
But Nadhim Zahawi, the former Tory chancellor who is now a member of Reform, said Dame Antonia being named Cabinet Secretary was a ‘good appointment’.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: ‘Civil service objectives are agreed between the employee and their line manager, not with the Permanent Secretary.
‘Antonia was not involved in the setting of these objectives. Dame Antonia has spent nearly a decade leading economic, public services and security departments.
‘She is an outstanding public servant, with a 25‑year record of delivering for the British people.’
Dame Antonia previously faced accusations of bullying related to her time as consul-general in New York in 2017, prior to her joining DIT, but was cleared by the Cabinet Office.
Downing Street said an ‘enhanced due diligence process’ was carried out before Dame Antonia’s appointment as Cabinet Secretary.
First Civil Service commissioner Baroness Gisela Stuart approved the appointment of Dame Antonia, who was previously found to be a suitable candidate for the job in the 2024 recruitment contest ultimately won by Sir Chris.
