Of all the institutions to fall to wokeness, the UK’s Royal Air Force might seem an unlikely candidate. You might have thought that the divisive campaign across elite institutions to introduce racially aware policies, to provide leg-ups to supposedly ‘vulnerable’ women and minorities, all allegedly in the name of righting past wrongs, would have run aground with the armed forces. Only the most committed bigot could care about the skin pigmentation, or (ahem) undercarriage equipment, of the person charged with protecting their homeland, so long as he or she is committed and competent. Surely, the RAF has more pressing concerns than the precise ethnic and sexual makeup of its recruits?

You’d be wrong. Because over the past year the RAF has found itself embroiled in a scandal about woke recruiting policies that is almost hard to believe. Last summer, it was accused of pausing job offers to white male candidates in order to meet ‘impossible’ diversity targets. Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl, then head of RAF recruitment, resigned in protest, refusing to implement what she called an ‘unlawful order’ to discriminate against white men, as part of an effort to boost the numbers of female and ethnic-minority recruits. The RAF has issued a series of obfuscating statements, but the evidence has kept on mounting. Tobias Ellwood MP, chairman of the defence select committee, says Nicholls identified 160 cases of white male recruits who were discriminated against before she resigned. Now Sky News reports that 31 white men, adversely affected by the targets, are to receive £5,000 each in compensation. Uncovered emails also reveal RAF bigwigs disparagingly talking about selection boards overly composed of ‘useless white male pilots’.