Even by the standards of quangos, few are as dysfunctional as the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This all-purpose equality quango, a classic new Labour creation, has become a can of worms. Formed from the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Disability Rights Commission, it is falling apart even more quickly than the government.

Six of its 12 commissioners have resigned, several in protest at the decision by Harriet Harman, the equality minister, to reappoint Trevor Phillips as its chairman. Mr Phillips, a former broadcaster, is a friend of Lord Mandel-son and was a Labour member of the London Assembly. He has friends in high places.

None of that cuts much ice with his former commissioners, one of whom, Ben Summerskill, was interviewed by the BBC yesterday. Mr Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the gay rights body, laid three charges against Mr Phillips.

The first, that he is a hopeless manager of an organisation with an annual taxpayer-funded budget of £70m, is hard to judge from the outside. The second, that Mr Phillips caused embarrassment with the revelation that he is running his own equality advisory business on the side, is undeniable. The Equate Organisation, a private firm in which he has a 70% stake, advised Channel 4 when it faced allegations of racism over Shilpa Shetty and Big Brother. It is rather like a driving instructor doubling up as an examiner.

It is the third charge that is interesting: that Mr Phillips makes announcements “on the hoof”. One such announcement, apparently, was when he said a few months ago that the police were no longer institutionally racist.

We rather like Mr Phillips’s on-the-hoof announcements, many of which cut through the political correctness that normally rules in organisations such as this. He rightly warned that multiculturalism posed great dangers and all communities should “assert a core of Britishness”. Britain, he warned, was “sleepwalking . . . to segregation”.

He warned of a backlash against immigration, which he rightly believes has enriched this country, unless more was done to look after the interests of the white working class. After Barack Obama’s victory last year he cautioned against expecting a British Obama because of the nature of our party system.

Just because Mr Phillips talks sense does not automatically mean he is a good leader of the commission. Perhaps he is a bad administrator. But maybe the problem lies with the unwieldy super-quango he is trying to run, with its different interests tugging against one another. And that is not his fault.