We are witnessing the most racially diverse leadership race for a major party in British political history. Candidates over the course of the contest to be the new Conservative leader have included Nadhim Zahawi, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, Sajid Javid and Rehman Chishti. Sunak, the frontrunner by some estimates, could become the first person of colour to be prime minister. If a similar exercise were to take place in the Labour party today, it is highly unlikely that there would be anywhere close to that many ethnic minority MPs in the running, and certainly none with a realistic chance of winning. Does this look and sound like a good thing? Well, it depends. And it’s also worth asking: a good thing for whom?
It’s certainly a good thing for the Conservatives, who can use the diversity of the leadership shortlist to score a point against the left. Already predictable arguments are being made that the shortlist proves that liberals just talk about equality but have no interest in achieving it, unlike the Conservative party. It’s also rather handy to have a feelgood story about the most diverse leadership election in history to distract from what has become a contest in deluded economic extremism on the one hand and nastiness about “workshy” and “woke” people on the other. And as we have seen, deploying senior politicians of colour, such as Priti Patel, to apply the hard-right Tory party agenda, on border policies for instance, is a neat way to absolve both the party and its voters from charges of racism.
