You know, the Republican party has firsts also...
This corroborates my point; being the "first" of anything is not even a token indication of good intent to anyone. My list is not a list of celebration, it's pointing out how being the first x has no correlation to supporting anything, not even the interests of the demographic they hail from. Like a gay politician who supports gay torture camps. There's no kudos for winning a personal career milestone.
But back to the point, sorta sad to see that apparently the Left is completely out of English politics. Then again, you lot still have nobility, so I guess that makes sense.
It's more to do with bankers than barons but the end result is the same
But back to the original "culture wars" comment: Wait and see how bad the racists get AFTER your first brown PM.
A white man attacked my mother during covid for coming from a covid-prevalent country, despite not coming from there, and working on the vaccine trial. Two white Britons came to her defence and forced him to back off. I've been assaulted twice on my race; one was black, the other brown. I've seen one serious case of harassment where a tall white skinhead was verbally abusing and intimdating a muslim girl. But these have been mostly exceptional. On the day to day basis the most serious racism I see or others tell me they find are problems of community (no one trusts each other), problems of belonging (the eternal foreigner wherever they are "oh that's an interesting accent where's it from or where are you really from though"), dealing with a casual racism (banter which doesn't stop but got old a long time ago) and sophisticated racism (people who are turbofucking racist but have the vocabulary of a civil rights campaigner to disguise it). And worst of all, the ever present structural racism, in which you can't get no money or post because you didn't have the right lineage, and having an xyz at the top doesn't change it because the structure is still the same :|
Racism is rarely simple. If it was as easy as bad guys vs good guys it would be wonderful but peace between two people is easy, prosperity between communities is difficult, prosperity between communities that aren't even communities is something that needs thought (money can substitute) to achieve
For the love of God DON'T let the racists take over one of your three major political parties. They'll certainly TRY to take over Labour or LibDems, if they're anything like the Far-Right drek. For better or worse, they're less likely to take over the party that put the leading brown man in charge. LibDems seem particularly vulnerable since they need a cause, but if Labour draws upon the working class, there might be fears of job stealing to draw upon.
It's the UK. Our racist parties don't care what race you are as long as you are racist too
I am not joking. But you can laugh if you want
Racism is normally more of a draw for the Conservative base in my experience. They like to hammer the 'tough on immigration' line. Not actually doing anything about it of course, because our economy needs young people to prop up our aging demographics. They also present themselves as the financially responsible ones, but IIRC the deficit tends to grow under their care.
There's been a lot of muddling in news between migration, undocumented migration, refugees and so on, it doesn't help to add to it by conflating them here too. Because if you go solely on tax balances and productivity, then conservative policy makes sense - if you wish to benefit from migration, then you need to select for young productive workers, and not include families or older persons who will take more in public spending than they will pay in taxes. But I think it's a dreadful thing to reduce human value down to "you pay taxes or fuck off," especially when there are many peoples with family abroad who cannot bring in their family on a permanent basis because of the trouble of getting a residency visa. Soulless money counting got us into this mess to begin with.
There are four immigration issues which the UK plays political hot potato with;
-The first, which is shared with the LibDems, Labour and Tories, and is reflected in reality, is that migrants who have come here legally are
NEEDED for a lot of critical vacancies. Highly technical, highly skilled work for example in the NHS, where the UK employers cannot attract enough UK national workers because the salary is unfair and unlivable. This madness of creating a permanent underclass of people you intend to fuck over until they die, retire or go back home to sustain a system that is inherently unfair is redressed as progressive charity, but is an example of structural racism itself. My own workplace is a marvel of wonderful bosses who do not have a bone of racism in their bodies; nevertheless it chafes me everyday that everyone running the show with no salary are ASEAN or West African or Afro-Caribbean and everyone doing fuck all with huge salaries are WASP.
This is not an acceptable solution. Do not make the jobs you have made hell someone else's problem. Make the jobs acceptable for everyone. I will be happier for it
-The second is the aging population. If young workers must pay for the aging population, then why do we not select for young workers and reject everyone else? Why do we not encourage young peoples to have kids? Because I don't think anyone seriously believes immigration is the answer to our pension or healthcare budget. I have not met a single young person <30 who made more than £29k. Each one at best can give the state £3.6k in income tax, £2.1k in NI and however much in VATs.
That wouldn't even cover the NHS balance for 1 old person in 2016, let alone 2022, and does not account for any other gov expenditure. Even if young people did not have the linear habit of becoming old people, current young people and projected young peoples are not enough and will never be enough, because young people are not paid enough as is. Taxes on the already incredible wealth older generations hold, or taxes on the incredible wealth wealther classes of society or corporations possess - though radical, should be considered as potential permanent balances to the government cheque book.
-The third is migration with documents vs migration sans documents. E.g. should you be able to live and work in the UK without a passport at all. Maybe one day; but this is a separate issue, and it is rather annoying that it is bundled together with the first issue when it is its own issue - one which itself should be subdivided, e.g. between people who overstay visas vs people who come here under even more precarious means with even less support available. You can get some nasty end results, like one of my friends from Pakistan who can't afford to stay, can't afford to leave the city, is sleeping on the streets, can't work because he came here illegally and no one will hire you without proof of residence/right to work, has no pathway to citizenship or residency, lost asylum appeal, suffering from heart problems and so on. The problems people like him face are completely different from someone who has come here legally to do work; they will require different responses too. It causes me mental pain to treat such a big issue as just you are racist if you have border control and fuck white people when it goes way beyond that. The race of Priti Patel should not matter when discussing her border policy unless her race is somehow relevant to her border policy, otherwise it's just an uncomfortable insinuation that anyone who is non-white should automatically be in favour of abolishing borders because their parents must've come here illegally -_-
The fourth issue is dealing with refugees, in particular what constitutes a refugee exactly. The main point of contention is that if you cross several safe countries to try and get into the UK sans documents, should you be protected as a refugee or are you in category three. Answer wrong and the gov may exile you to Rwanda, which I'm still not sure how that came to be. There is also an interesting difference in how the UK gov is much more likely to accept refugees who arrive by plane and have good documentation, e.g. Hong Kongers and Ukrainians getting accepted easily versus the 2015 refugee crisis.
There are some other issues which are comparatively less-discussed these days in political hot potato, but are worth mentioning. Multiculturalism was a historic labour meme which hasn't weathered well due to labour malpractice in handling child grooming gangs, terrorism and general national depression. The other thing worth noting is the UK gov taking a stance to effectively exile British citizens who joined ISIS. I'm certain the UK gov will at some point try to make it legal to revoke someone's citizenship even if they have no dual
Lib Dems are big on multiculturalism and quite firm supporters of individual rights, so it'd be a hard sell for them. Wouldn't be surprised to see some racism bubbling away behind closed doors, but it's not something they would try to build a platform on. I don't recall any racism related scandals with them.
They've had some with local council scandals but nothing as far as I remember involving top level LDs
Labour has some issues with racism, from both the working class and middle/upper class elements. Tends to make the news more because they've generally taken the party line of being pro-multiculturalism, so allowing racists to run around is hypocritical.
False allegations
The files obtained by Al Jazeera contain Labour’s disciplinary records from 1998 to 2021 and document their handling by the GLU. They show how some supporters of Corbyn were smeared with false accusations of abusive behaviour submitted to the GLU, including homophobia and anti-Semitism, with the stated intention to suspend or expel them from the party.
Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) reveals how a British political party that claims to embrace progressive values created a hierarchy of racism that discriminated against its Black, Asian and Muslim members. Interviews, internal documents and social media messages shared by the most senior staff in The United Kingdom’s Labour Party betrayed a racist culture where abuse was aimed at their own colleagues, councillors and political leaders.
The Labour Files, an I-Unit investigation based on 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour Party dating from 1998 to 2021, exposes how the party’s campaign to present a tough image on anti-Semitism, while ignoring other forms of discrimination, drove many staff to resign.
The full documentary's worth a watch over an idle lunch. But the reason why the conservatives got away with Boris's casual racism but Corbyn couldn't survive an internal party investigation was that his own party was delaying their own investigation in the hopes it would kill Corbyn's career by paralyzing his ability to do anything about the allegations
tl;dr
stop celebrating firsts for firsts sakes. Celebrate leaders who actually make things better