So just what is Andy Burnham going to do about Labour’s Black MP problem? Miatta Fahnbulleh is a start. She’s a key adviser to Burnham and has a wealth of experience developing and delivering policy to empower communities. We also know that she has worked hard to come up with new ideas to reshaping our economy inside government and out. But who else?
Glance at any of the selfies the UK’s new PM takes and the numbers of Black MPs in particular behind him are embarrassing. David Lammy has long since lost the confidence of his Tottenham constituency, near where I live in North London.
Dylan Law, the Green Party’s deputy mayor in Hackney Downs where I grew up, is the kind of fresh energy people want to get behind. Burnham talks a terrific game in his bid to fend off the rise of the Greens. But Zack Polanski’s disruptors champion Black political talent.
Where will it be in this next Labour cabinet? Who is the next male cab off the rank to speak to the issues affecting millions of Black and Brown men and boys in this country?
Who will be their advocate around the table to address their over-representation in the criminal justice system, their high exclusion rates from school increasing their vulnerability to exploitation, their mental health disparities and stop and search?
Who is the female MP to fight for the Black women affected by the racism and discrimination endemic in NHS maternity care, leading to Black mothers being nearly three times as likely to die during childbirth compared to white women?
Who is the Black female Cabinet candidate to end the perception that Labour’s “regard” for Black voters is largely performative, per the treatment of Diane Abbott and Kate Osamor, under the regime of Sir Keir Starmer?
Just a couple of months ago, Eunice O’Dame and Enid Mollyneux – two long-serving Black women councillors – were blocked by Labour from standing in one of its safest wards in Croydon, Bensham Manor. The seat was instead contested by Starmer’s niece, Ellie Sandover.
Nobody doubts Ellie’s ability to do the job and this is most certainly not about her as an individual. It is about Labour and their inability to read the room regarding Black candidates.
This is far from the first time this column has raised this issue. Labour simply cannot take our votes for granted. The UK is at its most febrile in terms of race relations since the vile Seventies and Eighties, with poisonous racism spouted unashamedly.
The Windrush scandal continues to see the state waiting for claimants to die rather that meet its responsibilities. More fool us for believing things would change in that regard with the Tories out of power.
Then there’s the ongoing hostile environment, the empowerment and appeasement of those rejecting anti-racism and so much more. Burnham has a golden opportunity, to do better than Starmer whose government pretty much abandoned Black Britain.
Young, clued-up people want visionaries who looks like them, speak truth to power and understand their lives. A Dylan Law would probably never have made it on to a Labour shortlist, based on the patterns of many years.
And if Burnham wants to change his Cabinet, he needs to do better than Shabana Mahmood, who defended Starmer’s Island Of Strangers remarks.
A woman who threw people of colour under the bus with her immigration policies and rhetoric. A woman whose left-wing principles disintegrated once she gained a whiff of high office. Us Black voters are waiting. Can Burnham rise to the challenge?