Lammy calls for ethnic minority short lists
14 05 2007
In a remarkably frank interview in today’s New Nation newspaper, David Lammy MP (pictured with Barack Obama), Britain’s most senior elected ethnic minority politician, has called on the Labour Party to introduce all ethnic minority short lists for the selection of parliamentary candidates.
The Culture Minister and MP for Tottenham said, “there should be 18 black MPs, 21 Asian MPs and the rest made up from other ethnic minorities if we were in proportion to our population. We aren’t just politicians. Let’s remember, the House of Commons is a house of representatives.”
The Labour Party is presently taking legal advice on the viability of the introduction of hybrid (all women and all ethnic minority men and women) shortlists, but Lammy goes further:
“I think the party will have to look in constituencies like my own where 50, sometimes more than 50 per cent of the electorate are from an ethnic minority background. And against a background that London 2020 is 50 per cent ethnic minority, the party does have to look at all-ethnic minority shortlists where the constituencies are failing to step up to the task.”
Lammy was one of the few ministers during the Blair era to have managed to maintain close relations with both Blair and Brown camps. As to whether the expected incoming PM will back this move, he says “I will be supporting Gordon Brown” and “I happen to know that Gordon Brown wants to renew the party and wants to renew that democratic legitimacy over the next period.”
In a wide ranging interview, Lammy says that discrimination is still a problem and that more needs to be done to tackle the problems of the African Caribbean communities but while government has a role, those communities must take responsibility too.
Many are hoping that Lammy, who entered parliament in 2000 and has already held ministerial posts in the Department for Health, the old Department for Constitutional Affairs and now at the Department for Culture Media and Sport, will be promoted to become Minister of State at one of the key departments of state when Brown appoints his first tranche of ministers at the end of this month.
Lammy, who has close links with U.S Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama , was a member of the London Assembly before entering parliament and the first Black Briton to have taken a Masters in law at the Harvard Law School.
Oh please- this is nothing more than Lammy trying to cover his political future and say publicly that he is supporting Gordon- I’m surprised the New Nation did such a puff piece.
I don’t share your surprise, Damian.
David Lammy, incidentally, is the worst possible advert for ethnic minority shortlists there is: a more hopeless minister I cannot think of. He should have been sacked on 14 December 2004 when he made such a fool of himself during the Mental Capacity Bill debate. To describe what happened to him as humiliating would be an understatement. He was shredded by MPs from *his own side*. That is unheard of.
His presence in a ministerial position, albeit a lowly one, can only be explained as tokenism. Not a few Labour MPs, political journalists and Black Sections veterans are less than impressed by his abilities.
There are plenty of politically talented BME people out there; David Lammy isn’t one of them.
Maria and Damian, I think you are being grossly unfair to Lammy. His first minsterial post was in health, where foundation hospitals were dumped on him by the hapless Alan Milburn. From health he was moved to constitutional affairs where, again, he was dumped on - that time by Lord Falconer - with the Mental Capacity Bill. Since then he has flourished at culture where, for once, his secreatary of state has witheld dumping on him and let him get on with it. By all means criticise, but lets see some balance, as opposed to simplistic slating.
Femi,
One dearly wishes one could find some redeeming qualities about David Lammy’s political career but nothing comes to mind.
You have to remember that as a minister, albeit a lowly one, he has to take responsibility for his case load, for whatever he is dumped with. The fact remains that he was a shambles at health and an absolute disaster at Constitutional Affairs. He was promoted beyond his abilities and everyone knew it.
Like it or not, informed observers simply don’t rate him. It is suspected that he survives at ministerial level because he is an unchallenging government toady, he can’t do much harm in an easy department like Culture and he serves as a useful token of multiculturalism for an otherwise lily-white government.
There simply is no way to lard these painful truths by ‘balancing’ them with any list of his achievements because they don’t exist.