UK equivilent of Obama may be unlikley

[electro girl]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/n ... 713441.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americ ... 713435.stm

Couldnt find the acctual article but I saw it on the news at 10 last night but te basics are that it is highly unlikley that the UK will have a black PM as there are few MPs from ethnic minorities.

What do you all think of this.

[Cliffjumper]

I think it's pretty patronising to infer that any black British politician should have to be the "UK equivilent of Obama". You are right, though - we're not going to see a black British president for years.

[Galvatron91]

To be fair, no one saw Obama coming either...then BAM, 2004, on the national stage. Suddenly he's a star of the democratic party, wins a landslide victory to get into the Senate and 4 years later he's the President. While the outlook may not look similar, the tides can change quickly and nothing brings out new leadership like difficult times.

[Denyer]

'Equivalent' links with 'valency' if you want a way to remember how to spell it...

Generally I don't think basic fact of skin colour is as much an issue over here as in the US -- religion might be, as we tend to prefer politicians to save it for their own lives rather than ours, and culture might be. There's still bias from self-subsistence on the part of the system (career politician isn't anything most families want for their offspring, the circles tend to be a principally male public school system, affluence is still concentrated on WASPs, etc.) but I don't think gender or skin colour are as much issues.

On the other hand, coming back to culture, we're pretty hostile towards many European accents and some of our own upper-class ones. Fail to speak like us (including failing to have control of British vernacular) and you aren't going to get very far in the side of politics that deals with the public.

Depends how much you conflate race/religion/culture.

[Computron]

To be honest the way the UK and the US are governed are different which probably leads to the fact it is harder to become a pime minister.

The US President is not the same as the UK Prime Minister and in terms of actual power is probably closer to the Monarch. The power to make laws, change taxes etc.. then lies in the Senate and Congress who have to vote it through.

This differs slightly where the UK Prime Minister leads the party that the public have voted for and is thus responsible for their policies. This generally means when something needs to be done and its voted in Parliment the Leader of goverment (who has a majority and thus more votes) can push through what they want (assuming no back benchers rebel and vote against party orders). Just compare how easy it was for Brown to bail out the banks compared to Bush who had to try and sweet talk Congress and the Senate whereas Brown just said I'm doing it, forced it through Parliment and did it

You also find that leaders of the paries tend to stay around a bit longer than 1 election though recent Tory and Lib Dem leaders have admittedly been coming and going at an alarming rate. As such when it comes to picking a leader the parties often have lots of people who have been in the party for a long time and are respected who get the more votes in a leadership battle.

As black MP's are quite recent you will probably find that nothing will happen for about 20 years just on the fact that the british parties like to elect leaders who have done their time in the lower levels and gradually rise up. I fully expect that given time when the new generation of Black MP's have started being around for years and get the respect (note White MP's have to do the same time to get respect so that wasn't a racist comment) you will see more ethnic minorities in higher positions and possible one day voted in as leader of a party.

So basically in conclussion I've waffled on for ages saying it will happen but due to the differences in the Prime Minister and President of the USA it will just take time

[Cliffjumper]

Yeh, the experience thing is really a big thing in most political parties - at 42, David Cameron is considered very, very young for a party leader, as was Balir when he was PM at 44. This does show the balance is shifting a little, but then both were brought through by the collapse of various old guards and/or the need for the parties to radically reinvent themselves. Blair was an MP for something like 15 years before too - even Cameron had done five or six years before being party leader, and was considered a young Turk with that service. It all takes time to filter through the system.

There was Paul Boateng (best remembered for being interrogated about Herman the Tosser by Chris Morris...) on the cabinet a little while ago, plus mad Communist Diane Abbott. I think it's fair to say much of the country's various racial, cultural and class... ural... make-up isn't particularly well represented by a couple of hundred Oxbridge grads.

Not sure a black Prime Minister would be much to fuss about either - race generally isn't quite such a massive ongoing problem in this country (though obviously divides exist, blah-de-blah-blah disclaimer stuff). As a random hunch, we're more likely to see a PM of South Asian ancestory first.

[Galvatron91]

I guess I wasn't really even thinking about it as a race issue as much as a quality of leadership discussion. Though that is the main point of the topic isn't it?

[Cliffjumper]

I didn't read the links, just bounced off "it is highly unlikley that the UK will have a black PM as there are few MPs from ethnic minorities". Obama's leadership skills we can only really guess/hope at for now... There was a similar amount of optimism when Blair won - here was a dynamic young PM who was going to sort out the shit of the outgoing Conservatives and revitalise the country... it didn't quite work out that way - we had something of an improvement I think it's fair to say (people knocking Blair should probably think back to the sort of state the country was in during Major's tenure as PM), but not, in the end, the sustained leap forward we'd all hoped for.

As a random point, which I can't phrase very well but I'm putting my faith in everyone not leaping to accuse me of KKK membership, I'm not sure Britain not having a PM from an ethnic minority all lined up is anything approaching a problem... I mean, white people are still the majority in the country, so there's nothing inherently racist in having mainly white politicians - sure, hopefully some of the other groups can get a portion of MPs more in relation to their population (though I fail to see how it's vital - growing recognition and understanding of Britain's current cultural make-up has come under a primarily white government over the past few decades... racism's still out there, of course, but I think all of us are probably too young to have seen it when it was really bad - in the late 1970s, a black footballer would get near-constant racist abuse from just about anyone in the stadium, and this would somehow be acceptable... now hardly anyone notices what colour a footballer is... compare and contrast to, say, Spain), but having few high-ranking non-white politicians is hardly a sign that the country's backwards.

[Jetfire]

I didn't read the links, just bounced off "it is highly unlikley that the UK will have a black PM as there are few MPs from ethnic minorities". Obama's leadership skills we can only really guess/hope at for now... There was a similar amount of optimism when Blair won - here was a dynamic young PM who was going to sort out the shit of the outgoing Conservatives and revitalise the country... it didn't quite work out that way - we had something of an improvement I think it's fair to say (people knocking Blair should probably think back to the sort of state the country was in during Major's tenure as PM), but not, in the end, the sustained leap forward we'd all hoped for.

Much agreed. As well as black people only making up less than 3% (unlike america's 12%+) and only seriously occupied the country since the 50's rather than over 300 years in the USA.

This criticism smacks of politicans jumping on the "Obama's america's first black president" bandwaggon. Obama is a superb politican whose hopefully ending the backwards and vile politics era personified by Bush. It's like the usual "America done it so we have to be the same".

'Minorities' in the UK, baring a few decades and obvious renements in small portions have been relative well integrated. I mean half of black people are married or live is married to a white british person, minorties from up north sound like they are from up north and there aren't vast sperate getthos based on ethnic profiles. Politican's using race without any justified racial incident is just self promotion and manilipuation in my opinion.

[inflatable dalek]

Much agreed. As well as black people only making up less than 3% (unlike america's 12%+) and only seriously occupied the country since the 50's rather than over 300 years in the USA.

Yup, we're only now with their kids and grandkids getting into a position where it's ever going to feasible, and even then it'll probably still be a few years before we see many really high ranking coloured politicians. Not because of racial issues but because as far as British politics goes it still matters more that you went to the right schools and universities than anything else (there are more exception that there used to be, but you only have to look at that pic of George Osbourne at Uni that did the rounds a few months ago where half the people he was at Uni with are in the Shadow Cabinet to realise the bonds of the old school tie are still very hard to break). There's more of a class divide than a colour one and there are many families who've been here two or three generations who can now afford to send their children to those places.

There was a similar amount of optimism when Blair won - here was a dynamic young PM who was going to sort out the shit of the outgoing Conservatives and revitalise the country... it didn't quite work out that way - we had something of an improvement I think it's fair to say (people knocking Blair should probably think back to the sort of state the country was in during Major's tenure as PM), but not, in the end, the sustained leap forward we'd all hoped for.

Yeah, that's my only real concern over the election result, that Britain has already had its own Obama and the US is going to be very disappointed.

And as a general point, having a female Prime Minister and another with Jewish parents (though IIRC Disraeli was raised Anglican after his father converted) did much the further equal treatment of those two groups. Hell, Thatcher was the last PM to have no women in her cabinet at one point.

One thing that did make me laugh about this story is that one of the papers did a interview with that Tory boy from Big Brother a few years ago where he said he still experiences racism in the party. The funny part was the claim he's one of the great hopes for the future of the party. They must be more desperate than I thought...

[Cliffjumper]

Yeh, two posts that hit the nail on the head... Britain is more divided by class rather than race, and with rare exceptions isn't broken down into racially-divided areas - there aren't many sizeable 'black' areas of cities or Chinatown-type districts or anything. There are, however, slum areas (and even cities) full of working class people getting ****ed over in much the same way regardless of skin colour... The non-white population of the country only really exploded post World War 2, and racial tensions have never reached much of a boiling point - there's been the odd riot, but no big movement or anything, no Martin Luther King-style figure has been needed or anything.

We might have an ever-growing number of Starbucks, we might have troops in Iraq for no good reason and we might like a lot of the same films, but there's still a massive amount of difference between the two countries. Race is really not such a big deal over here - should a black/Asian party leader come forward, apart from a few media comparisons with Obama, I seriously doubt race would be much of an issue, with "Britain's first whatever PM" being more of a trivia note rather than something hailed in some corners as a watershed event.

And yeh, Blair hit a lot of the same notes as Obama has, especially with a younger generation starting to take notice of politics. I'm fairly confident things will turn out better under Obama than it has for us under Blair, and as stated America is a markedly different country so a lot of possible parellels won't apply. I think we're better off for Blair than we would have been under either the complacent Tories or limp-wristed old Labour, but the whole thing seemed to congeal very quickly, and from September 11 onwards a fair bit of goodwill was lost as money was pumped into basically showing America we were on their side - we got involved in a lot of things that, beyond solidarity, really weren't a lot to do with us.

[inflatable dalek]

I still think that for the most part Blair did a good job, but the places where he screwed up he really screwed up badly. I think his ultimate reputation will depend on how well the rest of this parliament goes. Everything Brown does in his first (only?) couple of years till the election is likely to be seen as just an extension of Blair's time.