How diverse is diversity?

There was a funny article in The Independent yesterday about how with the demise of Maria Miller’s political career the Cabinet is now under-represented by “greedy shysters” and that the prime minister should create "all-greedy shyster" shortlists to redress this imbalance.

The response to the appointment of Sajid Javid in Miller’s place prompted a rather charmless column in The Guardian observing that the PM had to failed appoint another woman – charmless in that the author failed to pay tribute to the fact that we now have for the first time a Secretary of State who is of Asian background (and the son of a bus driver to boot).

If Javid ever has to resign his position, no-one would say that he ought to have been replaced by another Asian.

More snidey comments have followed. A poet lambasted the fact that Javid was “uncultured” – presumably a conclusion based on his former banking career. As was pointed out yesterday in The Times, the poet had no understanding of what a good minister’s DNA looks like. The transport secretary doesn’t need to know bus timetables to make informed decisions.

The Guardian columnist irked me much more. The term “diversity” increasingly just applies to gender. It’s become increasingly fashionable for male CEOs to say they wish to see their boards being more diverse, meaning they wish to see more women on them and that of course is great. What isn’t great is that the diversity momentum hasn’t embraced disability or ethnicity with it.

A group of us wrote to the prime minister a couple of years back saying his talk of this subject should be all inclusive and instead of saying “gender diversity”, as was the case then, he simply needed to say diversity and automatically include these other groups too (and indeed the working class). Despite many reminders, he never replied to the letter. By ignoring the request, he has been part of the drift for other groups to have been shoved off the diversity agenda – so much so that this minorly-historic appointment has virtually gone un-noticed. His favourite saying is that “we’re all in this together” but some, it seems, are more in it than others. The PM should and hopefully will make more of the significance of Javid’s appointment and he can still act to make the meaning of diversity itself more diverse.

Iqbal Wahhab OBE is the Founder of Roast Restaurant, London