Liz Truss' cabinet is Britain's first without white men in the top spots

Agencies | London

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The new British Prime Minister Liz Truss has selected a cabinet where, for the first time, white men will not hold one of the country's four most important ministerial positions.

Truss appointed Kwasi Kwarteng – whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s – as Britain's first Black finance minister, while James Cleverly is the first Black foreign minister. Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white has, in the past, spoken about being bullied as a mixed-race child, and has said that the party needed to do more to attract Black voters. 

Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second ethnic minority home secretary, or Interior Minister, where she will be responsible for police and immigration. 

The growing diversity is in part thanks to a push by the Conservative Party in recent years to put forward a more varied set of candidates for parliament. British governments have until a few decades ago been made up of mostly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority cabinet minister when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.

Rishi Sunak, whose parents came from India, was Kwarteng's predecessor in the finance job, and the runner-up to Truss in the leadership context. "Politics has set the pace. We now treat it as normal, this diversity," said Sunder Katwala, director of non-partisan think-tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity.

"The pace of change is extraordinary." However, the upper ranks of business, the judiciary, the civil service and the army are all still predominately white. Also, despite the party's diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative members of parliament are women, and 6 per cent from minority backgrounds.

Track Record 

Nevertheless, the Conservatives have the best track record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1868).

This is despite the fact that ethnic minority voters are much more likely to back the opposition Labour party, and that the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia.

All three of Britain's female prime ministers were Conservatives — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss. The first lawmaker of Asian descent, Mancherjee Bhownaggree (1895), also came from the Conservatives.

Johnson assembled the youngest and most ethnically-diverse Cabinet in history when he was elected prime minister in 2019. His three finance ministers included two men of South Asian origin, and one of Kurdish origin. The changes followed a years-long effort by former leader and Prime Minister David Cameron.