For the first time in the history of Great Britain, there will not be a white man in one of the four great offices of state.
Prime Minister Liz Truss, who beat Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership contest, is expected to appoint James Cleverly as Foreign Secretary, Suella Braverman as Home Secretary and Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor.
Kwarteng, who will become the UK’s first black chancellor, will take over from a post where three of his Tory predecessors were also from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background.
The long-awaited appointments were welcomed by some, including Boris Johnson’s former race adviser Samuel Kasumu, who resigned last year after a controversial report by the Racial and Ethnic Disparities Commission, which critics say dismissed the institutional racism.
“The new cabinet is another reminder that people from all backgrounds can go very far within the Tory party,” Kasumu said. “The challenge for us is that this diversity is reflected among those who vote for us. It will be key to the future success of the party”.
Kasumu recently co-founded the 2022 Group, an organization aimed at improving the “toxic” brand of the Conservative party and its relations with Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK.
“Labor has been taking ethnic minority voters for granted for as long as I can remember. It’s one of the reasons I joined the Tory party. I wanted to make sure people from backgrounds like mine had a genuine choice.” , he said.
“As a party we are open and willing to use talent from across the country. But more needs to be done to broaden our appeal to minority ethnic communities.”
Queen Mary University of London research from 2018 indicates that Conservative party members are 97% white, compared to 96% of Labor and the Liberal Democrats.
Simon Woolley, who founded Operation Black Vote in 1996 to increase the number of black MPs, said the new appointments would be “unprecedented”.
“This is unprecedented for any political party,” Woolley acknowledged. “But even more than diversity, it’s about politics. There’s no point in having great diversity if this cohort of MPs continues to engage in bogus culture wars that actually pit poor whites against poor blacks,” he said. “I desperately hope they don’t. I also hope they will recognize and address persistent racial inequality.”
Braverman will become the second Indian-origin British MP to be appointed home secretary if she succeeds Priti Patel, who resigned on Monday.
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In a statement, Conservative Friends of India applauded the diversity of the Conservative party. “Suella has been an outstanding candidate who has risen through the ranks of the party since her humble beginnings at Wembley,” the statement said. “It reflects that the Conservative Party is the true party of inclusion and meritocracy, where everyone has the opportunity to excel regardless of their background.”
But Shaista Aziz, a Labor councilor in Oxford and anti-racism campaigner, described Braverman’s appointment as “appalling”, given her support for former home secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s citizenship in 2019, and his calls for the UK to leave the ECHR following the Rwanda ruling.
“It is appalling that this is someone who has supported Rwanda’s deportation policy, the greater demonization of refugees and migrants, and also the Shamima Begum issue,” he said.
“It’s not enough to be a black politician or an ethnic minority in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. This is actually symbolic,” Aziz said. “I don’t think these three appointments will change anything for the vast majority of people of color in this country, especially people from working-class backgrounds. I can’t celebrate these politicians, knowing what their track record is at a time of deep division”.