OUR NEW Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has unveiled the cabinet she hopes will lead the country through the hard times ahead and return her Tory administration to public favour. 

While there’s the usual deluge of commentary on who is in and who is out, one notable omission from the first Court of Queen Elizabeth III is white men.

With Kwasi Kwarteng as her new Chancellor, Suella Braverman in the Home Secretary role and James Cleverly as Foreign Secretary, the top roles in British politics are devoid of white men for the first time in British history.

Scrolling further down the cabinet roster and we see Nadhim Zahawi as Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Kemi Badenoch as International Trade Secretary, and Ranil Jayawardena as Northern Ireland Secretary. 

Truss didn’t quite go as far as giving us our first Global Majority PM but the team that Liz Truss has wrapped around her presents a distinct change in how politics looks in this country.

There has already been much weeping and gnashing of teeth among regular political observers over the lack of white men in the new Government, but we can dismiss these concerns with Leonard Franklin’s famous quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

I’ve joined campaigners like Operation Black Vote and others for years in calling for more representation in our political systems. We argued that until Parliament and the Government looks more like the people it serves, we will always be left out of conversations. 

You would expect then that the announcement of this new Benetton team at the helm of our country would be a moment of celebration. You might expect spontaneous Carnivals on the streets of Peckham and Bradford. But don’t turn up at Westminster tomorrow expecting to see Diane Abbott and Ash Sarkar doing the conga in celebration around Parliament Square. 

For the political change that so much of the country is crying out for it is going to take more than simple representation. Or more accurately, it’s about to be proven that real representation is about more than just identity or heritage. 

In the centuries-old battle against systemic racism in Britain, we have long called for more people with lived-experience of those challenges to be at the forefront of designing new policies and building a new inclusive system. 

The value of lived experiences is that it is hoped they will cement the needs of the marginalised at the forefront of the minds of our representatives.

We hope to pick representatives who will act how we would act, and make the laws that we would make if we had the chance.

It isn’t possible for me to disregard the needs of Britain’s black, Asian, inner city and working communities because they are me; they are all around; they are my family and friends; they shape my thinking and define my perspective. 

Of course, the whole point of lived experience is that it is personal and individual.

All black people do not have the same lived experience.

Having sufficient melanin in your skin to fight off the tropical sun doesn’t make you immune to self-interest, it doesn’t force you to form community with people who look like you, and doesn’t define your political views. 

The new Truss Cabinet may have diverse heritages, but their schooling is even more homogenous than usual.

A whopping 74% of the new Cabinet went to private school (just 7% of British people do the same). Only five members of the new Truss Cabinet were educated at a comprehensive school. But the political stances of black people who went to private school and grew up insulated from some of the challenges that most other black people face are still valid views – mistaken views, but views nonetheless.

Most campaigners worthy of the name have long argued that the Labour Party needs to stop taking the votes of black voters for granted and that our political allegiances should not be assumed. 

Having said all of that, it is still hugely surprising that this recent rush to embrace ethnic diversity hasn’t come from the lefty ‘woke’ Labour Party, but instead from that bastion of privilege, the Conservative Party. 

The party of Enoch Powell, the Windrush Scandal, ‘Go Home’ Buses and Rwanda deportations had a list of eight leadership candidates and only three of them were white men. 

Rishi Sunak, Sajid Javid, Nadhim Zahawi, Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch were all in the running to lead this country, and other senior Tories like Priti Patel, James Cleverly, and Kwasi Kwarteng all sat out the contest.

So why is the Tory party so much better at doing visible diversity than Labour?

It wasn’t always this way. In 1987, Britain elected its first four Global Majority MPs in the modern era with Bernie Grant, Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz after internal pressure from the Black Sections within the Labour Party. 

At the time, every single Tory MP was white. Fast forward 35 years and the picture is very different.

While most Members of Parliament who are not white represent the Labour Party (41), the Conservatives have made up lots of ground in recent years and now count among their ranks 22 MPs who are black, Asian or minority ethnic. 

This is still below the number of MPs who would come from these backgrounds if Parliament mirrored society but represents a massive improvement in the last few decades.

It’s worth noting that despite having just 22 MPs of black or Asian heritage, the number of those MPs who are now senior in the party is quite remarkable. Almost of quarter of black and Asian Tory MPs were in the running to become leader this summer. 

It seems for black and Asian politicians at least, that the Conservative Party offers a much easier route to high office and ultimately power. 

So while the numbers of black people who hold Conservative views and fancy a life in politics might still be relatively small, for those who do, the path to political success might seem much easier than for their socialist counterparts. 

But power should never be a goal in its own right. Politicians should only seek power for the good they can do for their constituents.

When you also remember that Labour’s strongest where black communities are largest, and that politicians often represent these safe Labour seats for decades, it’s remarkable that so few black MPs are in senior positions in the party. It seems obvious that something is going wrong in how Labour treats its black representatives.  

The Forde Report, recently released after a long delay, pointed to extremely worrying attitudes within the party. It is hard to imagine that the racism, Islamophobia and naked factionalism the report describes has had no impact on stifling the ascent of black politicians over the years. 

But all of this is just about the internal workings of the parties. What really matters in the fight for a truly inclusive Britain is whether this new Truss Government takes structural racism seriously and makes steps to bring about the transformational change that so many black communities are crying out for. 

The prospects are not good as denouncing the impacts of structural racism seems to be a rite of passage for black and Asian MPs hoping to do well in the Conservative Party. You can’t fix what you can’t see. 

In fact, history suggests that politicians of colour are even more likely to push forward policies which would otherwise be denounced as racist. It took the now thankfully departed ex Home Secretary Priti Patel to push through the disgraceful Rwanda policy. 

While the optics might be about to improve, the wait for a truly anti-racist British Government which works tirelessly to make sure all citizens can thrive and enjoy the riches of our country still seems like a very distant prospect. 

Regardless of the impact on policies, a senior line-up devoid of white men will at least go some way to changing the nation’s idea of what a politician looks like. That might not be worth a conga, but it is at least to be celebrated.