For the first time there is no white person in any of the four highest positions Kwarteng takes the finance portfolio, Smartly Abroad Diversity now ‘normal’ in Britain, says expert
LONDON, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss has chosen a cabinet where for the first time a white person will not hold one of the country’s four most important cabinet posts. Truss appointed Kwasi Kwarteng – whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s – as Britain’s first black Chancellor of the Exchequer while James Cleverley is the first black Foreign Secretary. Smart, whose mother is from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, has previously spoken out about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has said the party needs to do more to attract black voters. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second minority home secretary, or home secretary, where she will be responsible for policing and immigration. The growing diversity is partly due to the Conservative Party’s push in recent years to put forward a more diverse set of candidates for parliament. British governments until a few decades ago were mainly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority minister, when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury. Rishi Sunak, whose parents were originally from India, was Kwarteng’s predecessor in finance and Truss’ second in leadership. “Politics has set the pace. Now we treat it as normal, this diversity,” said Sunder Katwala, director of the non-partisan think tank British Future, which focuses on immigration and identity. “The pace of change is extraordinary.” However, the upper echelons of business, the judiciary, the civil service and the military are still predominantly white. And despite the party’s diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative MPs are women and 6% from minority backgrounds.
RECORD
However, the Conservatives have the best record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister in Benjamin Disraeli in 1868. This is despite the fact that ethnic minority voters are far more likely to support the opposition Labor party and the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia. Former prime minister Boris Johnson apologized in 2019 for describing burqa-wearing Muslim women as letterboxes. The Conservatives have elected all three of Britain’s female prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss. The first MP of Asian origin, Mancherjee Bhownaggree in 1895, was also from the Conservatives. Johnson assembled the youngest and most ethnically diverse cabinet in history when he was elected prime minister in 2019. His three finance ministers included two men of South Asian descent and one of Kurdish background. The changes followed a long-running effort by former leader and prime minister David Cameron. When he took office in 2005, the party had just two ethnic minority MPs out of 196, and he wanted to ensure his party looked more like the modern Britain he hoped to lead. The following year, Cameron presented a priority list of women and minority candidates to be selected, many for safe seats in the House of Commons. Truss was the beneficiary of this push. “A key element in ensuring the strength and resilience of any group, including a political party, is to avoid everyone thinking and acting in the same way – avoiding groupthink,” said board member James Arbuthnot of the party. nominations committee when Cameron introduced the changes. But Kwarteng has played down the importance of his nationality. He has said that although he experienced racist abuse growing up in the Eighties, he does not see himself as a symbol for anyone other than his constituents in Spelthorne, which borders south-west London. “I actually think it’s not that big of a deal,” he said after being appointed as the first black Conservative minister. “I think since you’ve brought it up, I don’t think it’s something that comes up as much.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Humza Jilani. Edited by Andrew Cawthorne Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
