The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has selected a cabinet where for the first time a white man will not hold one of the country\u2019s four most important ministerial positions.
\nThe cabinet, which met for the first time on Wednesday amid energy crisis, includes the most diverse top team in British history: Kwasi Kwarteng as finance minister, James Cleverly as foreign secretary and Suella Braverman as interior minister.
\nKwarteng\u2019s parents came from Ghana in the 1960s as Britain\u2019s first Black finance minister while Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, is the first Black foreign minister.
\nBraverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second ethnic minority home secretary, or interior minister, where she will be responsible for police and immigration.
\nThe growing diversity is in part thanks to a push by the Conservative Party in recent years to put forward a more varied set of candidates for parliament.
\nBritish governments have until a few decades ago been made up of mostly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority cabinet minister when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.
\nRishi Sunak, whose parents came from India, was Kwarteng\u2019s predecessor in the finance job and the runner-up to Truss in the leadership context.
\n\u201cPolitics has set the pace. We now treat it as normal, this diversity,\u201d said Sunder Katwala, director of non-partisan think-tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity. \u201cThe pace of change is extraordinary.\u201d
\nHowever, the upper ranks of business, the judiciary, the civil service and army are all still predominately white. And despite the party\u2019s diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative members of parliament are women and six per cent from minority backgrounds.
\nTrack record
\nNevertheless, the Conservatives have the best track record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister in Benjamin Disraeli in 1868.
\nThis is despite the fact ethnic minority voters are much more likely to back the opposition Labour party and the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia.
\nFormer UK prime minister Boris Johnson apologised in 2019 for describing Muslim women wearing burqas as looking like letter boxes.
\nThe Conservatives have elected all three of Britain\u2019s female prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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