Esther McVey made two blunders when talking about diversity today on live TV.

The Tory MP – who had the informal title of the “minister for common sense” in the last government – told BBC Politics Live that she agreed with US president Donald Trump’s decision to scrap diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) schemes.

She said: “The new agenda is MEA – merit, excellent and intelligence.”

The correct acronym for this is not MEA but MEI.

But McVey did not appear to pick up on her mistake, and just continued: “You should have the best person for the job, not doing tokenism and quotas, we shouldn’t have one discrimination with another discrimination, so I would move on – DEI in the past.”

Presenter Jo Coburn replied: “Right, you did try to ban civil servants – or certainly restrict civil servants – wearing rainbow coloured lanyards when you were common sense minister.”

McVey, who was appointed as a Cabinet Office minister without portfolio by Rishi Sunak in November 2023, announced a ban on multi-coloured lanyards – used to show support for LGBTQ+ community – in May last year.

At the time she said she was determined to tackle the “left-wing politically correct woke warriors” in the public sector.

“I want a very simple but visible change to occur to the lanyards we use to carry our security passes [which] shouldn’t be a random pick and mix,” McVey said last spring, adding: “The focus should be on a happy and inclusive working environment and increased productivity.”

But, when reminded of this event by Coburn today, McVey just said: “Well, let’s get to the substantive, rather than you picking up on the gimmicky bit.”

“Well it was your gimmick!” Coburn hit back.

But the MP persisted, and said civil servants are “not meant to be political” and “any kind of badge or lanyard is political”.

“I had said we wouldn’t have any – I wasn’t saying this lanyard above that, so people wearing Palestinian ones or LGBTQ ones – just no lanyard,” she said.