Spot the Black Lib Dem?

As the Liberal Democrats kick off the party conference season, the pundits have been discussing the nature of liberalism in this country, but will it discuss race inequality and diversity particularly in its own party

One of the main areas for discussion is that while Britain is basically a liberal country, in the 2015 General Election the party lost over 40 seats. Some Liberal Democrats believe with the Labour Party moving to the left, now is the time for a re-awakened Liberal Democratic Party bolstered by disillusioned centrist Labour MPs and supporters, and led by a new leader Tim Farron happy to offer a ‘home to Labour MPs’.

Yes, Britain is in many ways a liberal society, with the majority of us believing in values including fairness, personal freedom, secularism, enlightenment, distrust of authority and support for the underdog. Putting to one side, if possible, the economic unfairness which neo-liberal economic policies have caused, the great British public are content to be ‘liberal’, enjoy their freedoms and think a society in which everyone gets along with each other is a good thing. This goes for race relations too, with most British people enjoying an increasingly multi-cultural society.

Why then was the electorate’s affair with the Liberal Democrats so fragile that in May millions of voters deserted them?

One reason may well be that on the question of race, the Liberal Democrats were far behind the two main political parties with hardly any effort made to recruit BME candidates or encourage BME supporters. If in May 2015 you wanted to vote for a political party that showed it was representative of our racially diverse society, you would notice that the Conservatives had increasing numbers of BME MPs, Ministers and Peers and were promoting them on merit. On the Labour benches, and lists of candidates, again there was an increase in BME representation. We welcome London’s Labour members voting for Sadiq Khan to be their candidate in the Mayoral election next May.

For many years, BME members of both main parties were noticeable on the Westminster benches, featured in the media and doing their constituency work. For the voter for whom a multi-racial society is a ‘good thing’ both the Tories and Labour parties deserved a cross in the ballot box at the General Election, while the Lib-Dems were completely unrepresentative of a country in which over 8 million people are non-white.

If the Liberal Democrats become a re-energised force in British politics, which I think unlikely in the next ten years, they must work very hard to show they’ve learnt this lesson, and do all they can to attract high calibre BME candidates and significantly increase their BME members. If you are at the Lib Dem conference at Bournemouth this week (and I’m not) I doubt whether you could count the number of non-white faces on the fingers of both hands.

Meanwhile, if he’s clever, Cameron can continue his efforts to increase the Tory BME representation and let the numbers of non-white Tories demonstrate his liberal, multi-racial values and lose not one minute’s sleep over a re-energised Liberal-Democrat Party. It was not by chance that an increasing number of black voters supported the Tories in May 2015.

Paul Hensby