Cameron setting the agenda?

How depressing to read that once again David Cameron and his Tories attempting to seize the progressive agenda by promising to allow some "all-women shortlists to help us boost the number of Conservative women MPs".

I have long argued for all-women shortlists (which is not official Lib Dem party policy) on the grounds that, although illiberal in the short-term, they will encourage and be successful in increasing the number of women in Parliament, as has been shown by the Labour Party in the 1990s.

I would go one step further and argue for all-bme shortlists, where appropriate, this does not necessarily mean in constituencies with significant numbers of ethnic minorities, viz the success of Ashok Kumar's 1991 by-election win in Langbaurgh and now Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (white population, 98.6%).

Furthermore, the victorious experience of Adam Afriye and Sailesh Vara in primarily white rural constituencies in southern England shows that the "ethnic penalty" no longer exists.

It is time that the Lib Dems (who let us not forget returned the first non-white MP Dadabhai Naoroji in Finsbury Park in 1892) began to take the represetation of ethnic minorities and women far more seriously and to put in place far more radical measures in place to ensure that our party, and more importantly Parliament, much better reflects British society at large.

We shouldn't be palying catch-up with the Tories of all people.

Democratic Deficits

One of the failings of the modern day politics, is the lack of ethnic minority representation in Parliament. There are only fifteen MPs of colour, whereas proportionately, there should be four times as many.

I bring this up because today is the birthday of Dadabhai Naoroji, who became the first Asian to be elected an MP in 1892, as a Liberal naturally. He was quite a remarkable man who was a co-founder of the Indian National Congress.

However, bar a couple of other notable exceptions, it was not until the 1980s that the first cohort of Black MPs was to be elected.
To achieve a Parliament that truly represents ALL the people we still have a long way to go.

And don't get me started on the lack of women...