The day-to-day bad news from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is serious stuff for the so-called 'funny season'. High-level resignations and briefings have kept this heavyweight institution in the news continuously for several weeks.
Words such as 'beleaguered' and 'autocratic' have been dripped into the media's attentive ears. For an institution set up to improve the way human beings treat each other, this kind of war of all against all is, by any standards, destructive.
From the outside, it is hard to be certain what is actually going on. One thing is for sure, however. The different streams of equalities and human rights bodies that were brought together in the EHRC generally did not want to be moved in together.
The EHRC's predecessor lobbies were concerned that their particular stream of activism would get lost within a larger and multi-directional institution. There will always be a tension between 'revolutionaries' and 'gradualists' within organisations of this kind. Politicians seeking to settle old scores may be indulging themselves in some kind of war by proxy. Who knows?
Heaven knows what either the public or senior Conservatives will make of this unseemly squabble. Given the Tories' desire to cull quangos, anyone attempting to destabilise the EHRC should probably be careful about what they finally hope to achieve.
A decision to abolish an appointed body of this kind might be even less desirable than the EHRC in its current form.
