Diversity is one of the big issues that political parties are attempting to address in the run up to May’s election, and deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg has admitted that his party is saturated with white male politicians.
“Our parliamentary party is too male and pale,” he said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. “If we want to represent modern Britain, we have to have modern Britain represented in us.”
Despite admitting that the Lib Dems are lacking in both female and BME candidates he also stated that it is ‘more difficult’ for them as a smaller party to address diversity.
“One of the challenges we have as a party, unlike the two larger parties, is they can kind of disperse constituencies and candidacies for winnable seats a bit like consolation prizes around to candidates.
“We can’t do that because we’ve always had to painstakingly work year in, year out before people even win elections.”
The Lib Dems aren’t the only political party to come under scrutiny for their lack of diversity. It was revealed last week that the number of BME candidates in the Green Party is worse than UKIP, with ethnic minority candidates making up only 4% of the party in comparison to UKIP’s equally low 6%.
“What we do know is that one in seven candidates in London is from a BME background — and we have people from all walks of life standing for the Greens up and down the country,” Benali Hamdache, Green Party equalities spokesperson said in an interview with the Evening Standard.
“The Green Party is committed to standing up for the rights and concerns of BME communities and we need to ensure we’re doing that not only through our policies but in the way we do politics as well.
That’s why we have quotas for BME candidates in European Elections, a BME network to recruit candidates and support their candidacy, and it’s why we launched a group dedicated to representing BME members of our party at our recent spring conference.”
Ashok Viswanathan, deputy director of Operation Black Vote, was unimpressed by these figures, and said that he was “not surprised at all”.
“The fact is all the parties have failed to put into practice a comprehensive programme to recruit, retain and promote BME talent,” he added.
Image: BME
