Making big corporations our moral arbiters

When did we decide that big businesses were our moral arbiters? Yes, companies have legal personality, but until around six years ago, the idea that they might have collective opinions would have left us utterly bewildered.

In a dizzyingly short time, we have come not just to accept a degree of political bullying from multinationals but to expect it. It started with low-level wokery: diversity training, ethnic quotas, arbitrary targets for female board members, and the like. Employees at the British headquarters of Accenture, the management consultancy firm, were told to wear rainbow-colored lanyards declaring themselves “allies” of various supposedly oppressed groups. Gillette produced TV adverts attacking toxic masculinity.