The black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) vote – often discussed as though it were a uniform entity, acting with robotic synchronicity but safely in Labour’s hands – matters like never before. Come May, a quarter of a million first-time voters will be from this category.
Now the manifestos are, finally, upon us. (That sentence could read either way depending on how energised or bored you are by the election and its attendant media coverage – but I digress.) One could view the launch of Labour’s BAME manifesto today, a day after the party’s main manifesto, as an addendum with ominous portent – namely, that all pre-election promises will swiftly be forgotten once the party is in power. A more charitable stance would be to see it as a good attempt to repair the belief that it has taken BAME votes for granted.
The above, I accept, is tinged with a hint of cynicism. Yet it is arguably time to leave such scepticism aside three weeks before the election. When we consider what BAME communities have on offer from the two parties most likely to lead the next government, the choice is a stark one. If Labour gets into power, we will have a government with an outline of how it plans to address the institutional racism and structural inequality that remain a pernicious part of BAME lives.
Race hate crimes are on the rise. BAME graduates are three times more likely to find themselves unemployed six months out of university than their white counterparts. Once employed, they will earn 9% less than their white counterparts. As a result of the coalition’s cuts, BAME youth unemployment has increased by 50% since 2010. Organisations such as the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust were loud and clear with such warnings.
Labour has plans to increase BAME representation within politics, the judiciary, civil service and police force. In doing so, it is at least showing it is conversant with the issues facing this diverse group of people. The same can’t be said for the Tories.
In their 83-page manifesto, the Conservatives make one paltry reference to ethnic minorities. This lack of engagement is at best a woeful tactical blunder, particularly when one considers that the party could have gained an outright parliamentary majority had it – as the thinktank British Future concludes – appealed to BAME voters in the same way it did the general electorate.
Another manifesto launched this week, by the organisation Operation Black Vote, notes that BAME communities have the power to sway results in 168 marginal constituencies. Indeed, the Financial Times reports that in 50 of the Conservatives’ seats Labour is second, with the BAME vote proving larger than the Tory majority. Meanwhile, in just under half of their 40 target seats, the BAME vote is “larger than the majority they are trying to overcome”.
Labour, aware of the gains to be made, has at least set out its stall. Tackling the culture of poverty pay and job instability speaks to BAME communities, who are disproportionately affected by this pernicious reality. So, too, does the scrapping of the coalition government’s employment tribunal fees, a measure that has succeeded in pricing out those most likely to face discrimination from accessing justice.
One can only surmise that the Tories suspect reaching out to BAME voters is a pointless endeavour, one that complicates a streamlined message to core voters. They will do well to remember that by 2050 we are set to make up a third of the electorate. Sacrificing potential BAME votes by failing to engage with this constituency is a shortsighted risk – and that is putting it lightly.
The Tories have failed to deliver on even the little they have offered BAME communities. It had been touted that the party was looking to make companies collate and publish the ethnicity makeup of their employees. This bold and seismic shift would have been a real olive branch to BAME communities from the party of Enoch Powell and the Go Home vans, yet the plan proved to be a non-starter. In this absence, Labour is proposing to create a new commission with the power to set targets on “equality of opportunity from recruitment through to the very top of the workplace”. Instituting the Equality Act 2010 has stood Labour in good stead, yet it still has had the spectre of Iraq and its woeful policies on asylum seekers to overcome. Its manifesto suggests it seems to know this.
Labour’s manifesto is making steps in the right direction. Should the party win in May, it will be in no small part due to gaining the lion’s share of the BAME vote. Labour will have to ensure pre-election pledges are more than just that. Precedent shows that on some things, at least, they can deliver.
