Michael Gove attacks ‘immoral’ big business for hiding behind ‘woke agenda’

Big corporations have “co-opted” the woke agenda to “insulate themselves” from resentment at their wealth, cabinet minister Michael Gove has said.

In an extraordinary attack, the Tory levelling up secretary used a speech at right-wing think tank to condemn “immoral” businesses for the “accumulation of wealth for its own sake”.

Accusing businesses of exploiting woke politics, Mr Gove said “privileged” firms have allied themselves with “the resentment industry” – which he described as “the biggest growth industry in the world”.

The Tory minister made the comments at a London conference organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc), a right-wing organisation co-founded by controversial speaker Jordan Peterson.

Fellow cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch told the Arc conference that “silly things like pronouns” and considering “people’s skin colour” were distracting the UK from major challenges like the rise of China.

The business secretary also urged corporations not to get “distracted by all sorts of silly things like pronouns and what critical race theory is saying and measuring people’s skin colour and so on”.

In an astonishing diatribe against big business, Mr Gove said large corporations have been able to use “their size, their lobbying ability, their closeness and proximity to power” to “rig markets in their favour”.

He added: “We have seen a concentration of wealth, a tendency towards monopoly and oligopoly that has meant that the gains of economic growth have increasingly been concentrated in the hands of a few.”

The senior Tory said: “Those who have been privileged, those who already have significant assets, those who are smart and connected, have been able to enrich themselves at a rate that has only exacerbated inequality and therefore led to resentment.”

Mr Gove said: “You will find that there are major figures, major institutions within the corporate world who are well aware that the decisions that they’ve taken have enriched them.”

He added: “And they are also conscious that they need to insulate themselves from the envy, resentment and, indeed, sense of injustice that is out there.”

Mr Gove said business chiefs had “co-opted individuals from the resentment industry to be their advisers on ESG (environmental, social and governance), EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) or whatever other acronymic shield they wish to put up”.

Arc was founded earlier this year and is backed by Dubai-based investment company Legatum Ventures and British investor Sir Paul Marshall – who are both investors in GB News.

On Tuesday the audience heard comments from scientist Steve Koonin, who said there is no climate crisis and claimed that refusing funding for fossil fuel projects in the developed world is “immoral”.

Mr Peterson, rhe controversial Canadian academic, and Conservative peer Baroness Stroud are among its leading figures.

Mr Peterson – whose interviews are increasingly popular on Youtube – hit out at identity politics, saying was “tearing us apart”.

He used his Arc speech to claim the left-wing thinking about identity leads to a “pathway that’s marked out by nothing but ... self-serving hedonism”.