First ethnic minority PM will be Tory, says black MP

A SENIOR Tory MP tipped as a future leader has pledged the party will produce the first black Prime Minister – because Labour is run by ‘old white men’.

Conservative Party deputy chairman James Cleverly, whose mother comes from Sierra Leone, sparked fresh speculation about his own ambitions by predicting the Tories would be the first party to put an ethnic-minority politician in Downing Street.

Mr Cleverly, 49, said: ‘I’m going to say yes, I reckon we’ll have the first BME [black or minority ethnicity] Prime Minister.’ But when asked whether it was most likely to be him or Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Mr Cleverly says: ‘Haha. Look, it could be Sajid, there are a number of people.’

The Braintree MP told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘That’s what freaks the Labour Party out. They are realising there is a very credible chance that we will have had two female Prime Ministers and a black Prime Minister, maybe even a black female Prime Minister, before they’ve had even their first female Prime Minister.’

He added: ‘The real decisionmaking in the Labour Party is by old white men. Assisted by young posh men. You’ve got [Jeremy] Corbyn, you’ve got [John] McDonnell, they drive it and they are supported by Seumas Milne, who is a posh public schoolboy, and James Schneider, a posh public schoolboy.’ Mr Milne and Mr Schneider, who are Mr Corbyn’s two most senior aides, both attended the elite £40,000 Winchester College.

Mr Cleverly also accused Mr Corbyn’s team of appointing women such as Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry as ‘a few baubles superficially’.

He added: ‘It’s a tight little cabal, same old, same old.’