Last week, as our papers filled with greenwash and Scott Morrison worked on the betrayal of his “quiet Australians” ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, the Times came out with one of the best cartoons you’ll see all year (it’s the illustration to this story, just in case you haven’t guessed). 

To use Homer Simpson’s line, it’s funny ‘cos it’s true. Much of the best humour is based on exaggeration of what’s going on around us to expose it for the true nut-jobbery it is.

All around the world, companies are embracing virtue signalling and there’s nothing different about corporate Australia.

It’s becoming incredibly “inner-city” in its approach to the world, embracing the values of mobile, economically secure, knowledge class professionals. The top end of town has decided politics is a vital part of business — in an entirely different way to its traditional practice of defending its interests as a creator of wealth and jobs.   

This is politics politics where there are far different faultlines to the old divisions of labour and capital.

By embracing the politics of the inner-city, corporates are spurning the rest of us.

That’s not only a turn off for people in the regions, the burbs and city fringes. It exacerbates divides as advocates of inner-city values are notoriously exclusionary, regarding those who don’t share their views as, well, deplorables.

The woke corporates pushing for grand climate commitments at Glasgow, net-zero emissions and so forth are happy to talk about “social licenses” to operate while moving way ahead of their customers and other stakeholders on a whole string of issues, even cutting across these people’s interests.

Their “social license”, put simply, violates the social contract. It not only divides society but segregates it into worthy and less worthy groups, the inner-city elect and the rest of us.

We need to follow Times cartoonist (and frequent Spectator cover artist) Morten Morgan’s lead and laugh their posturing out of existence while we still can.