Hugh Muir in the Grauniad worries about the under representation of minority women in Parliament. More specifically, he complains that all female shortlists have not produced any minority candidates and thinks that something needs to change.

Trevor Phillips, chair
of the Commission for Racial Equality, has talked of bringing political
parties under the remit of the Race Relations Act. A party filled with
analysts and wonks must be able to provide some answers. Can AWS be
made to work for non-white candidates or must we now shift towards
all-black shortlists? Is there scope for hybrid shortlists, perhaps
women and minorities only?

If,
as officials say in private, there is a dearth of minority candidates
able to triumph against more practised white candidates with local
contacts and friends in high places, isn’t it time the parties and the
unions got serious about talent-spotting? There seems little shortage
of stand-out minorities in law, the arts, or the public sector.

Me? Of course, I’m way out of step here, for I still have Burke’s old dictum in mind, that MPs are representatives, not delegates. As Natalie Solent has pointed out Ian Paisley works extremely hard for his non-Protestant constituents.

However, I am able to put Hugh’s mind at rest. For just last week there was a report from the Fawcett Society into just this issue, the supposed under-representation of Black and Ethnic Minority women (BEMs). Now this isn’t what they said but it is what they showed. That 90% of BEMs over 45 are immigrants, that levels of education and workforce participation in this group are vastly lower than in any other group in the country. In the lower age cohorts, while there are still differences  in such matters between BEMs and the general population, they are smaller (and in some cases, better) than. So it would appear to be a problem that will solve itself in time, for as education and participation in the wider economy away from home meet the general levels so will representation. (I am assuming that mid forties is a likely or reasonable time to become an MP…not unfair I feel.)

What is really being complained about is that ill-educated immigrant housewives are not running the country. Not an issue I can get worked up about.