As the Telegraph reports this morning:
Burberry has sacked its diversity chief as part of a sweeping overhaul at the luxury goods giant.
In a move that could signal a retreat from its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, the retailer has ousted Geoffrey Williams and axed his role altogether.
Mr Williams, who was global vice president of colleague attraction and inclusion at Burberry, said he had been “phased out” as part of a company-wide cull.
Three thoughts.
First, that the Telegraph has reported this when others have not makes clear its own bias against the DEI agenda.
Second, the willingness with which businesses are abandoning DEI shows how thin its commitment ever was, as many of us suspected.
Third, the march of Trump's fascism moves on without him ever demanding change: far too many are simply willingly complying to curry favour with crude power.
So, I suggest not buying Burberry, not that I will have difficulty complying with that suggestion: I have never bought Burberry.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
In my younger days, I once went into the Burberry store in central London. They had a sale on. I tried something on, either a jacket or coat, cannot remember. It did not sit quite right so I asked a salesman for a different size. He sniffily replied, ‘You are just not the Burberry shape’.
Needless to say, I have never been back.
🙂
We can be certain that you would be “Burberry shaped” had you arrived in a chauffeur-driven Rolls!
I had a warm Burberrys coat for starting school decades ago. It was a normal every day brand in those days bought by working class people. Not sniffy at all then.
It has always struck me how TV adverts for a company’s product have always displayed far higher levels of ethnic diversity than their boardrooms.
True.
I’ve seen DEI across five organisations, only one of which was big enough to have a dedicated resource in the UK but all of which are household names. By far and away the primary focus of all of them was on improving gender balance in the firm. Race, class, disability and LGBTQ barely flickered on their radar. Frothing at the mouth right wingers never had anything to complain about in the first place (unless they were misogynists I guess).
The demise of this function is similarly for unspectacular reasons. Businesses aren’t hiring and some even want people to quit to reduce redundancy costs, so why spend money on people whose task it is to attract the right talent?
Its not just in the sphere of DEI. It is also true of so-called “sustainability” agendas. Most corporations only paid lip service in order to be seen to be doing the right thing for the environment (and gaslight their customers). In my professional life I acted for a number of companies that got into legal difficulties with the EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (no names for obvious reasons) and they would use every device and excuse available to them to try to wriggle out. It was clear from my involvement with these clients (many at director level) that their public statements of “sustainability” and “concern for the environment” were nothing more than blatant greenwashing and they would abandon them in a heartbeat if the political climate changed. That is what many of them are now doing at a time when the real climate is changing and changing for the worse.
Yo do not surprise me.
And thank you.
Not just companies. The government is also hiding from the public the fact that sustainability does not matter to them.
https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2025/08/21/new-case-launch-uk-first-legal-challenge-data-centre/
Interesting that they will not say who is going to run the big new data centres. Could be Meta, which would be their way of letting Musk give them lots of money for the party.
Lots more examples on Foxglove’s site.
Musk is not associated with Meta. But I accept your general point – a big player might be greasing some palms. Indirectly, obviously. Allegedly.
Thank you Jen