Britain is not ready for BAME PM

[notnever]

Rishi might just be voted by MPs but will not win general elections. Already we are reminded he is rich, has an US Greencard, cut taxes, unrelatable, wife is rich and did not pay tax, did not declare tax, etc, as if any different from Boris.

Do you think Britain is ready for BAME PM?
Yes = you are unreasonable
No = you are not being unreasonable

NB, you don't have to explain whether it makes Britain racist or not. I am personally happy he is standing for leadership, it will be his good reminder (as many of us BAME know) racism trumps social class.

Quite probably the same MP as I have, parachuted into a safe seat, in exactly the same way that Braverman and Patel were, there is no balance in the Tory party always moving to the right.

@Thecatsatonthewalls
Public pay freezes sets the tone for wage increases across all sectors.

No they don't.

Yes i was very good friends with a polish family who both worked in food processing in Wales, they became managers and recruited mainly from EU workers, harder working, would do day w/e and night shifts, their pay rates were way above the UK average.
this idea EU were all working in car washes and picking fruit is rubbish.

And...

Cheap imports from China would devastate UK car manufacturing/associated industries, throwing millions on the dole - in or out of the EU.
MG is Chinese owned, what a heap of rubbish, i don't we need more Chinese copies.
Perhaps you'd be better asking why China operates a very closed market? or should trade barriers only fall one way?
Given China's aggressiveness in the Pacific, i'm not sure we should be increasing them at all, likewise India's support for Russia.

You mentioned car washes and fruit picking, not me, but I think I understand. You want businesses to have access to unlimited cheap labour, while denying UK citizens access to cheap goods. This is good for me how? Even you own anecdote shows freedom of movement was bad for UK workers. I live in an area that has a high proportion of supply chain based business. Strange how as soon as free movement ended, almost everywhere has had to increase wages significantly. Almost as if there was some kind of drag factor on wages that has been removed. Trouble is, it was just making up for rise we should have had over the last 15 years.

We need more on shoring in this regard and trading more with allies... perhaps even your hated EU.

Not gonna happen unless we reduce crippling energy costs and taxes which make it so expensive to do business here

Being in the EU never stopped UK services or manufacturing from operating and exporting the world over, financial services and many large UK manufacturing companies have been exporting and operating all over the world in the last 50 years.

This is not a benefit to consumers.

The EU has never been more popular across Europe, elections since Brexit have shown this, plus extensive polling, even Le Pen has had to roll back her anti EU stance.

I wonder how long this will last given the German economy is collapsing and on the verge of energy rationing, and we wont mention their abject failure on Ukraine. The Dutch government are trying to seize peoples businesses, destroy food production, and their police are happy to try and murder teenage protesters. Macron's just had a disaster in the French elections. We all saw what happened in Spain with the Catalan people. The Danes are pretty much telling the EU to fuck off regarding immigration. The EU is trying punish Poland. Lets not even mention Hungary or Austria.
What a happy club.

Most of the Brexit voters racists I know of want Kemi Badenoch.

Agree with pretty much all this although I have reservations about Rayner for PM.

Right now on twitter I'm watching white, MC lefty liberals pretend all the minority candidates are rich private school kids and that Katherine Birbalsingh knows nothing about real racism. In fact there is a mix of state, private and scholarship just as in most parties currently.

Its laughable.

I disagree with Birbalsingh on most things as I do with the candidates. However othering minorities and women, dismissing us as "the wrong sort of minority" is pretty disgusting to watch.

They should be focusing their energies on understanding why Tories have a slate which is near 100% minority, female or in mixed race families (in some cases all three of those) when the left had to mandate a woman on the slate to get one at all. Its shameful and that is what we should be addressing rather than making shit up to excuse the failure.

I think people don't like him and think he is corrupt so that would be a real handicap.

But a lot will always depend on who the leader would be running against. Starmer - I think he would have chance but it wouldn't be a sure thing. Neither were inspiring.

You really can't just compare Boris as if the situation was identical apart from their race. Boris was being compared to the other leaders. Some of his votes were really about punishing Labour. And Boris, whatever else you can say about him, can be very charming and funny. I don't think Sunak has that advantage.

Personally I would be much more likely to vote for Javid, or even Badenoch though she is a little young for PM IMO. I'd certainly prefer them to a Starmer Labour government. None of the other candidates interest me much, even the white ones.

I agree. Kemi Badenoch represents Saffron Walden, which is very white and voted Brexit. At the last general election 39,000 people voted for her. That's more than the previous incumbent, the (white, male) Tory grandee and deputy speaker Sir Alan Hazelhurst ever got in 30 years and 8 elections. That was 63% of the total vote, which is also more than Hazelhurst ever got.

Maybe the wall of gammon will actually vote for anyone who they think represent their values regardless of sex or ethnicity. Perhaps it really is Labour who have the problem here. When the anti-Semitism allegations surfaced I thought that it must be from Labour pandering to fundamentalist Muslims. But I was wrong- the cause was old, white, male leftwing zombies back from the 1970s.

TBH What any Tory MP got in a GE isn't relevant, many areas will vote Tory regardless of the candidate.
Yes we vote for an MP but we also vote for the Govt of the UK.

@Notlabeled I doubt we will agree over Brexit.

In my anecdote, the UK worker was more than able to apply and work in a uk food factory but because they wouldn't work shifts, they were turned down in favour of workers who would... simple market forces.

I wonder how long this will last given the German economy is collapsing and on the verge of energy rationing, and we wont mention their abject failure on Ukraine. The Dutch government are trying to seize peoples businesses, destroy food production, and their police are happy to try and murder teenage protesters. Macron's just had a disaster in the French elections. We all saw what happened in Spain with the Catalan people. The Danes are pretty much telling the EU to fuck off regarding immigration. The EU is trying punish Poland. Lets not even mention Hungary or Austria

Don't know where to start with that lot... Macron is the only leader for many years to be re elected and he saw off the threat of Le Pen, now he has to form a coalition, nothing remarkable.
Spain dealt with the Catalonians (similar to how we are dealing with Scotland - denying them a vote) the EU stayed out of it.
Poland is/was introducing a non democratic judiciary, against membership rules, they ve backed down.
Hungary shouldn't even be in the EU.

On energy rationing, that is the price of sanctioning Russia and will affect all of Europe, OFCOM has also talked about limiting energy this Autumn/winter.

But at least France has only seen a 4% rise in electricity prices inc businesses, so at least they'll be able to attract business to their shores.

I know you want the EU to collapse but perhaps be careful what you wish for.

We are but we don't a globalist puppet like Sunak. Time for the people to take back their power and doesn't matter what colour

Fat chance.I’ve been hoping for the revolution for two decades. I thought Covid might be it. You could finally see who were genuinely key workers in the country and which sectors of industry made a difference
Sadly it’s just gone straight back to the non essential being overpaid for societal reasons than any meaningful contribution requiring 5/10/20 times minimum wage.

YABU
Ofcourse a BAME will be the PM. Have you seen the mess we are in?

BAME and Women get their poisoned chalice handed over in times like this, in this state we are in, so the Tories can brag about having the 1st woman, person of colour etc. We then all gloat about how better we are than America.

A nice little set up. Afterwards (during elections likely) when things are about to improve, they send in a white knight to the rescue and prove that you can't be governed by people of colour. That person will then take credit - even if the groundwork was already done - like BoJo and the right wing media will praise them to high heaven.

Why did you think we had so many BAME and Woman candidates bandied about so much this time😒

There is an article in the Guardian today about how awful all the Tory candidates are. As you can imagine there are a fair few such articles (and I'm not saying they're wrong).

First comment below the line is one applauding the diversity of the choice of candidates.

Followed by a heap of replies about how they're not diverse at all because, well... err.. they just aren't.

Except they are. I think the real, unstated objection from those commentators is that they're the Wrong Sort of BAME Candidate. Which is very patronising, and paternalistic, if the people saying that are white, and may explain why Labour has never had a leader who isn't white and male: all the alternatives have been Wrong in some way.

I'm glad someone mentioned this.

It's called the glass cliff effect and is exactly what is happening here.

The problem with that view is that it's only two years until the next general election. Assuming someone BAME becomes PM they will either:
a) clear up the mess sufficiently in the eyes of the voters to win the next general election, or
b) lose to Keir Starmer, who is unlikely to be the white knight the Tories had in mind.

There isn't time for an option c) ie, another leadership contest.

Plus Johnson can always be scapegoated for the mess.

So in my new notanotheroneagain is putting forward a fanciful conspiracy theory, really quite a harmful one actually.

Given that there have only been two women PMs, and there have often been different sorts bad situations that PMs have been elected into, this is an odd conclusion to draw. Lots of white male PMs have inherited terrible situations too.

And there are plenty of MPs who are "diverse" and haven't been given some sort of poisoned chalice.

I suspect not many people wanted the job when May had it because it looked completely unrewarding but it's not like she had to do it either.

This is all over twitter as well. White, MC, lefty liberals, torch bearers for tolerance for anyone and anything except minorities and women who don't know our place.

We are supposed to vote left, particularly Islington/Hampstead left, because we "owe" it to them and should know our place whilst yet another white man is elected. Lets face it - the only reason they have a woman as deputy is because the rules were changed under Blair to force it.