Comment Liz Truss, who won a bitter battle to succeed Boris Johnson as Britain’s prime minister, is set to preside at a historic moment: For the first time, a white man is unlikely to hold one of Britain’s top four jobs power. Truss is set to name James Cleverley as foreign secretary, Suella Braverman – whose parents came to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius – as home secretary and Kwasi Kwarteng as the country’s first black chancellor or head of finance, UK media. reported stores. Cleverly, whose mother is from Sierra Leone – his father is from Wiltshire, about 90 miles outside London – has spoken publicly about being bullied as a mixed child and has spoken at Conservative Party conferences about how the party can win support from black voters. Kwarteng, whose parents immigrated to Britain from Ghana, wrote a book examining the British Empire’s rule over the former colonies of Iraq, Kashmir, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong. The diversity of Truss’ ministerial appointments won praise from some quarters, in a nation where Conservative Party members – about 0.3 per cent of the UK population – are generally older, wealthier, 95 per cent white and more right-wing from Britain as a whole. (Almost 85 percent of people living in England and Wales identify as White, government figures show.) “The new cabinet is another reminder that people from all backgrounds can go far in the Tory party,” Samuel Kasumu, Johnson’s former tribal affairs adviser, told the Guardian newspaper. Not everyone seemed convinced. A headline in Britain’s right-wing tabloid Daily Mail wistfully declared: “Liz Truss puts final touches on diverse government: No place for white men in high office.” Her predecessor, Johnson, also had a quite different line-up of senior ministers. Home Secretary Priti Patel was the first British MP of Indian origin to hold this appointment, while the three chancellors during his premiership included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background. Truss was his foreign secretary. Some have pointed out that although ethnically diverse, Truss’s potential top appointees come from the party’s right wing. Kwarteng had pushed for Britain to leave the European Union quickly, while Braverman said schools may be able to legally ignore the preferred pronouns of gender non-conforming and transgender students. Truss, 47, is promising to cut taxes and boost borrowing to finance spending, even as inflation soars to 10% and the Bank of England predicts a prolonged recession until the end of the year. Truss also promised to make reducing illegal immigration a key priority, ensuring Rwanda’s policy of deporting asylum seekers entering the UK on small boats continues. Liz Truss succeeds Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom The centre-left opposition Labor Party has a more ethnic and gendered group of lawmakers, but they occupy a smaller proportion of the party’s top posts. said Labor politician Shaista Aziz on Twitter in response to news of potential Truss appointees that “it’s not enough to be black or a minority ethnic politician in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. This is actually symbolism.” Ahead of the leadership vote, Aziz wrote an op-ed in which the Conservatives do not represent the concerns of ordinary people. “Despite all the talk of diversity and inclusion, Tory candidates of color and everyone in the race support the party’s right-wing immigration policies, which include removing asylum seekers from the UK and taking them to Rwanda for processing of their asylum applications. ,” he wrote last month. Labor MP Marsha de Cordova said that while Truss’s cabinet was expected to be diverse, “it will be the most right-wing in memory, embracing a political agenda that will attack the rights of workers, particularly minorities”. William Booth and Karla Adam contributed to this report.
