Comments on: Comment: Time is running out for the Lib Dems on diversity

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:36:36 +0000

The Lib Dems are an irrelevance and rightly so, it’s Labour who need some more diversity – chiefly they need to stop pretending their traditional working class – especially white working class – voters don’t exist and cutting us out of the picture, politically, altogether. I know the modern Labour upper echelons are embarrassed by us, with our regional accents and unseemly dietary habits but the party will ignore us at its peril. We have been ignored long enough, he more you concentrate on everyone else but us, the more we’ll stay at home come polling day.

Identity politics has always been a deception, more about redistributing inequality – no corporate glass ceiling, more black people in authority etc – rather than rdistributing wealth and opportunity for all. More women in the boardromm, for example, looks good on the face of it but you can bet your backside it will be more *middle class* women, some single mother from an estate can piss off and work in Primark or Sports Direct.

Labour needs to earn our votes, it hadn’t before the last General Election, you saw what happened then. They failed not because they were too left wing, which self-interested quislings like Danczuk and Umunna would have had you believe, but because they were chasing the middle-class right vote. Anyone still banging the drum for a shift back to the right needs to look at Corbyn’s popularity and be quiet.

Gender politics is divisive, disingenuous neo-liberal nonsense that serves only to give the illusion of equality.

By: Imran Khan

Imran Khan — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 08:26:45 +0000

Why am I still awaiting moderation?

By: Imran Khan

Imran Khan — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 06:12:13 +0000

I am surprised that Lester Holloway is still flogging this dead horse. His preoccupation with it is due largely to the fact that he still wants to be an MP despite having been deselected as a councillor in a South West London borough.

His basic premise is that ethnic minorities will only vote for their own and if there are therefore no ethnic minority candidates then that explains the low turn out amongst ethnic minorities. At best this is patronising and at worst racist. As a person of Pakistani descent am I supposed to not vote until I am presented with a candidate, from whatever party, that happens to have the same ethnic background as myself?

I vote on the basis of political belief and not race as do all of the other people I know from ethnic minority backgrounds. I am afraid Mr Holloway is flogging the failed identity politics of the 80s and 90s and seems to be quite happy for people to stay with their self made ghettos. No thanks.

By: Lester Holloway

Lester Holloway — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 21:07:34 +0000

Simon, as a Lib Dem member of many years you will know that a high proportion of conference motions call for changes in the law. It’s the stock-in-trade of politics; to argue not just for changes that do not require legislation but to argue for changes that do. Aside from contentions that all-BAME could be legal – I won’t go into that because it is refuted by others and untested – our own previous leader has called, in the Speakers Inquiry, for secondary legislation to enable all-BAME lists so that all parties have the choice of whether to use them or when. There are many Labour politicians who have made the same call, including David Lammy. Further, Labour have already had four all-BAME shortlists, all in safe or highly winnable seats, unofficially (ie. they were shortlists that just happened to be all-BAME). The reality is that some these unofficial all-BAME selections came amid a background of BAME members saying ‘if we can’t get a candidate of colour here where can we?’ But back to the Lib Dems… all-disabilities shortlists (mentioned in the motion) would fall under the same category as all-BAME (which isn’t). I have heard the excuse you make already about the law, and in the context of the rest of my comment above this is just not a credible argument. I’ve got a more plausible explanation; that Black representation was just low down on the hierarchy of equality of those putting this motion together.

By: Simon McGrath

Simon McGrath — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 19:41:15 +0000

“The motion ends with a vague reference to the possibility of all-women and all-disability shortlists sometime in the future, but no mention of all-BAME shortlists.”

That would be because all BAME shortlists are not legal ( all women or all disabled are, which is why they are in the motion )