Andy Burnham’s first cabinet includes four ministers from visible ethnic minority backgrounds: home secretary Shabana Mahmood, energy security secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, AI minister Kanishka Narayan, and Lisa Nandy as culture secretary. A decade ago, this team alone would probably have generated headlines. Now, it has barely registered.
This silence on the makeup of the cabinet tells us something important about ethnic diversity in British politics. We have entered what might be called the “post-first” era of minority representation. For the past 40 years, the politics of representation revolved around one question: could ethnic minorities reach the highest levels of political office?
