I’ve spent a lot of my life turning my nose up at positive discrimination – it was OK for other people but I certainly didn’t want to use it to achieve my ambitions and nor did I feel I had to.

And then I became active in politics!

I know we have a supply side problem with our approved candidates but the trouble with focusing solely on campaigns like CGB, i.e. training and mentoring, is that it assumes that the lack of supply is down to lack of ability or capability.

It’s not just that, it’s also a lack of desire on the part of women (at least) to get involved in politics; the reasons for this are many and varied and probably the same for why there are so few women bloggers. But in one sentence you would have to sum it up as the fact that women don’t find the game of politics, the way it is played and it’s rules attractive enough to make the sacrifices required. If you want to make the players more diverse you have to change the game. So even if the CGB were properly funded it would be limited in its achievements.

It is suggested in most of the academic writing that I have read on this topic that to change the political agenda, both the nature of the laws passed and the way the politics is played out, requires a minimum of 30% of the MPs to be female. Any lower than that and you just get women adept at playing at the guy’s game in the way the guy’s do (Margaret Thatcher, classic example).

There are no national parliaments in the world that have achieved 30% female MP without some form of quotas or positive discrimination. PR helps but we could do more as a party to redress the imbalance without lamely waiting for it.

So, back to your three choices. Option 3 is neither working or in my view addresses the supply side issue correctly; Option 1, which is actually what is happening will never work and then it as to be, with heavy heart, Option 2 – all women shortlists.

May be they are on holiday?

Chris Rennard, Rabi Martin and many other prominent Lib Dems were part of the faulty, unequal, big joke selection and objections appeal that replaced me with a white man.

All I wanted was justice.

All I got after I complained that the chair of the constituency was telling me to move on and leave the way clear for a white man as my political future was finished in the constituency, (he claimed that 3 Manchester councilors agreed with him and he was relaying a message on their behalf), was a fair process that did not include ‘her race is a liability I am a white man vote for me I have a better chance of winning on council estates’.

All I got was a big joke to say the least.

Oh and did I tell you, nobody distanced themselves from the chair’s comments. He continued as a officer for nearly 2 years until he interfered in a selection process in a ward and the member involved was upset.

He then became membership secretary! And to the best of my knowledge, still is.

What a farce

I hear what you’re saying, but the problem is not merely numbers of approved candidates, but how well prepared they are for what they are letting themselves in for and what they do about it. That is a capacity building and training issue. All successful candidates (i.e. MPs) either work extraordinarily hard or are extraordinarily lucky, and you can’t do anything about the latter.

This is further complicated by the fact that a lot of the skills, self-confidence, determination and social network support that successful candidates need get hard wired into, say, a public school, Oxbridge educated minority. That’s why they do well – not just in politics but in so many other fields as well. Yet many of these people will have never gone on something called a “capacity building course” and so superficially it appears that we have a level playing field when of course we do not.

A lot of the frustrated approved candidates I’ve come across – whether they are women, BME or white and middle aged – seem to think that everything is plain sailing once you’ve got approved candidate status. We have to be honest with people: that’s just the start of the process. But we also then need to be able to give them the tools to take it further. The problem is not, in my view, that party members are prejudiced against BME candidates, as you seem to imply, but that they don’t sufficiently appreciate what we need to do to redress the imbalance which is ingrained in society.

But why would capable , ambitious BME and women potential candidates rush to get on the Approved List when they know they are likely only to end up as fodder for the party in no hope seats?

For three consecutive general elections we boasted that we fielded the largest number of BME candidates. I presume the Party approved them only because they were judged good enough to become MPs!

Yet not one of them has subsequently gone on to be selected in a winnable seat – and it looks like it wont happen in the next general election either

And so far I have not seen any sign that of the Diversity Fund being used for the purposes for which we were told it was being set up –

BUT

I agree with Lord Rennard – we can return to this subject with a vengenace after the 19th.

For now — let us use all our energies in the Ealing Southall by election

It is important that Nigel does well – for all sorts of reasons !!!

http://andymayer.blogspot.com/2007/06/scale-of-our-diversity-challenge.html

I think a big part of the problem we are discussing here is that it is often considered outside of the context of the way the Lib Dems work – especially in terms of campaigning. Too much is made of bringing in women and minority candidates in at top levels or in promoting seats with such candidates through the target scheme. Aside from whether or not these are successful, they miss the point.

As James said, “Our problem is that women and minority ethnicities are under-represented in our list of approved candidates.” This will not be addressed by bribing or otherwise cajoling constituencies to select these candidates.

We need to look to the root problem. Why do we seem to have a bias towards white males at all levels, which seems to get worse as you progress up the members > activist > councillor > approved candidate > MP pyramid?

(If anyone has stats to suggest otherwise, please tell me I’m wrong – I hope I am)

I think these are the issues we need to address and we need to address them by looking at whether our practices deter women and minorities from moving up the pyramid.

This will take a lot of hard work and a lot of time and, of course, a lot of money. But yes, it absolutely has to be worth it,

From my own experiences here in Wales I was unhappy with the number of women prospective candidates we had come forward for May’s elections.

In the end we fielded 11 women and 29 men on the constituency ballot and 13 women and 20 men on the various regional ballots (actually the higest of any party)

However, only 4 of those 13 women on the regional ballot were ‘real’ candidates. The other 9 were merely added on the the bottom of the lists to ensure there was some semblance of gender balance. Only 1 woman made it to the top of a regional list.

Labour, on the other hand, managed to select 24 women candidates on their constituency ballot. The Tories 10 and Plaid 9.

A large part of the difference can be explained by Labour’s policy of twinning constituency seats: pairing up seats to ensure that a woman and a man were selected in each set of equally winnable seats.

Plaid Cymru uses a form of positive descrimination to ensure that a woman candidate has the top position on all its party regional lists.

The Electoral Reform Society recently said of the Lib Dems in Wales: “When the party’s fortunes in the last election are examined, a pattern emerges which suggests female Lib Dem candidates have a higher hill to climb than male Lib Dem candidates. The average swing needed by a woman standing for the Lib Dems is 23% while the average swing needed by male candidates is 16%.”

The Party as a whole, including Wales and Scotland and Cowley Street need to address this problem practically and not just with rhetoric. Actions, and in this case, money, speak louder than words. What example was Ming setting with his recent reshuffle?

The more we encourage under-represented groups to come forward, be they BME, women or the disabled, the richer our Party will be as a result.

#10 Chris R: “currently seeking” a diversity officer? In my naivety, I had assumed this post had already been filled. It was agreed at Conference last year, put into this year’s budget and yet from what you are saying the person won’t even be in place by the start of August. As you well know, I’m sceptical about how a single person can tackle the entire diversity brief at all satisfactorily as it is. But with it taking so long to appoint the position, is it any wonder some of us question how much of a priority diversity is at the top?

The general election will quite possibly happen in May 2008. The party’s post GE diversity strategy is set to begin at some point in the last third of 2007. QED.

Having said that, it was something that he made an unmistakable commitment to, and whilst the diversity fund will hopefully make a difference, the big problem is indeed getting women and BME members to the stage of applying for approval. Once they are approved, they are as eager to compete for promising seats as any other segment of society.

Ironically, comparatively small investments of time and money spent earlier in the piece would almost certainly reap rich dividends, a bit like local campaigning, as I understand it.

Unfortunately for both the noble Lord Chris and Ming, the fact that the diversity fund is shrouded in mystery is an open invitation to be cynical, noting the quite understandable limitations on what data can be made public. Frankly, given that such bodies as English Candidates Committee have doubts, it would be surprising if those further removed from the process were wholly unsuspicious of the motivation of the leadership.

On Mike’s point, I’d say that he’s only halfway there when he suggests a need for women and ethnic minority candidates with experience of the ‘real world’. I would either withdraw the last element (we need more, full stop) or broaden it to simply say that we need more candidates with experience of the ‘real world’.

There is, however, an argument that says that this should not just be left to the Federal or English Parties. Regional Parties could also have a role, were they to take the initiative. And as most of you reading this piece will have better access to your Regional leadership that to the English or Federal equivalents, why not start there?

I’ll be there this weekend as I have been every weekend since the election was called, and I’m taking much of next week off to help out. I’m confident that we have a real chance of getting Nigel elected if we put out all the stops. But it isn’t a long term solution to a fundamental problem. Your answer to everything can’t be “win more by-elections” (although it often seems to be).

Chris Rennard