Fearless Trevor Phillips slays yet another PC shibboleth

Iconoclastic gadfly Trevor Phillips has startled the nation with his latest social policy pronouncement.

This intervention of the leader of the Commission for Racial Equality follows on from his dismissal of multiculturalism and the damming of government policies that are non-British — after years of arguing the polar opposite. Phillips has now turned his fecund brain onto yet another area of social concern: the necessity, or otherwise, of letting people progress as far as their talent will let them without fear or favour if they are millionaires.

Phillips was speaking on his latest pet topic to an enthusiastic crowd of his office support staff and a delivery man from a nearby dry cleaners who variously punctuated his address with calls of "tell it like it is dude" and "right on Philly" before leaving with £9.95 and a two quid tip.

The speech allowed Phillips to explain why he feels that positive discrimination towards the less well off from ethnic minorities is no longer needed.

Speaking at his modest mansion in Stanmore, Phillips made it clear that "there was a time that people of colour should have been recognised as needing extra assistance" but that "that time is gone". Luckily, the time during which such "extra assistance" was needed coincided with the period that Philips was growing up in Britain following his arrival at Southampton as the captain of the Empire Windrush.

People paid to be friends of Phillips say that the curiously enigmatic leader has been buoyed by his success in gaining publicity for the CRE in recent months. While not quite achieving anything, those who have met the dynamic head say that with his public persona boosted by all those Halifax adverts he is now ready to move into "cross-over" territory.

However, Phillips have vowed not to stray from one commitment that the CRE has always stood for: namely the payment of a sizeable salary to whoever is running it.

Next week, in a move towards taking the CRE more into areas relevant to the general population, Phillips will be giving the first of a series of talk on sport. His initial address will be on why Chelsea's veteran French central defender isn't putting enough effort into his game and deserves all the criticism he gets.