Sophie Corcoran

Guest columnist

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BRITAIN should be a country where your future depends on talent, effort and determination. It should not be decided by whether you tick the right diversity box. Yet today, far too many of our institutions are putting identity ahead of ability. From recruitment policies to university admissions, affirmative action is warping opportunity in ways that are unfair, divisive and corrosive to young people striving to make their way in the world.

I have watched brilliant friends denied jobs simply because they were white. Others, despite top marks, have been turned away from universities in favour of candidates who did not even meet the minimum requirements.

How can it be just that a gifted young person is excluded because of the colour of their skin? That a hardworking student is refused a place while someone with lower grades walks in on a quota? These are not isolated scandals. They are part of a growing trend that undermines merit, corrodes standards and eats away at the very idea of fairness.

That is why, in my role as Young People's Director at the Great British PAC, I have launched a campaign to end affirmative action in Britain. These policies do not create fairness, they obliterate it. They send a poisonous message that success is not earned through effort and talent, but through the right box being ticked.