Labour’s leadership vote should be a chance to confront race inequality
The polls are open in the Scottish Labour leadership contest, and the party’s members can be excused a bit of optimism.
No, Labour is not in a great place in Scotland, and hasn’t yet fully come to terms with tussling it out for second with the Tories. And no, it isn’t an entirely happy, united family either. What Labour has got, however, is a clear sense of direction. There are positive results it can build on, enthusiasm about its policies, a UK leader that most in the party (at least grudgingly) welcome, and a general consensus that a weakened SNP should be outflanked from the left.
It also has two candidates for leader with radical credentials who can refresh Scottish Labour’s appeal to the thousands of new members and supporters waiting for it to become a winning force again.
Yes, you read that right. Two candidates.
Informed watchers will know what has been said and written about Richard Leonard and Anas Sarwar, and will be making their own minds up, if they haven’t already. They will also know – and possibly be concerned – that Labour leadership elections are now as much about stacking up the votes as winning the battle of ideas.
This isn’t an apology for either candidate, although I do confess to being puzzled at how a former dentist first elected in 2010 has had to deny claims of being from the careerist, Blairite old guard. Sarwar was born three years before me, and is just 18 months older than a wellknown Guardian columnist who accused him of representing the “old guard”. It’s a head-scratcher. Maybe my old-guard membership card is in the post.
What has been striking about this contest isn’t the claims that have been made, but the debate that has gone missing. The void at the heart of the leadership election is race.
Perhaps because of Labour’s low ebb in Scotland, it has gone largely unremarked that for the first time in political history anywhere in Great Britain, there is a realistic chance of a major party electing its first minority leader.
Sarwar has quite understandably said he wants to be a candidate for all Scots – but that shouldn’t prevent the wider debate that has been curiously absent.
It’s important to say that this doesn’t imply any criticism of Leonard or his campaign. However, those in Labour, on the left, and in wider society who seek a more equal and inclusive politics, should ask themselves what it means that race has only appeared in the form of dog-whistle briefings about new members with “Asian-sounding names”.
Why does this matter? Since 1997, when the would-be Labour leader’s father Mohammad Sarwar became the UK’S first Muslim MP, voters have sent minority representatives to Holyrood and Westminster seven times. Three of those occasions involved the same household.
Twice, that has been the same person, with the younger Sarwar elected to Westminster in 2010 and then Holyrood in 2016.
The Scottish Parliament has never had more than two BAME lawmakers at any one time, vastly under-representing the size and diversity of Scotland’s non-white population. As parties struggle to achieve gender balance among candidates in winnable seats and list positions, minorities consistently lag even further behind.
There has been steady progress at Westminster, with 52 minority MPS elected this year, but it isn’t clear that things in Scotland are changing at all.
Against that backdrop, Scottish Labour could elect someone who has the potential to become the most powerful BAME politician in British history. From day one, the Scottish Labour leader will get a seat on the Labour executive, helping to set policy for what could be the next UK government. Judging from the current polls, they could end up leading the official opposition in Scotland, and under Holyrood rules they have a better chance than is normally acknowledged of becoming the next first minister. By 2021, they could control a budget twice the size of the mayor of London, with greater say in the UK’S post-brexit constitutional future.
Despite this, the only headlines about Sarwar’s background have concerned his family’s wealth and education. Those questions are perfectly legitimate to ask of someone who wants to lead Scottish Labour, and Sarwar would have expected them. Party members and supporters are entitled to judge him by his answers.
To see those questions debated without any context has been troubling, however. Sarwar’s father arrived in the UK in 1976 and built a successful business – often the only avenue for social and economic advancement open to first-generation immigrants, particularly those from a visible minority. Likewise, it is wellestablished that immigrant communities put a premium on education as the only way to get an equal foothold in society. Critics who try to equate Sarwar’s wealth and private education to the unearned privilege that sloshes around the UK’S elite betray the bankruptcy of their progressive politics.
The truly ugly commentary has focused on what should be a welcome boost in engagement by Scotland’s Asian community. A branch secretary in Sarwar’s own constituency resigned after alleging that several people had joined Labour using the same e-mail address.
They were clearly unaware that minority communities are less likely to access the internet at all – a fact recorded in the UK government’s Race Disparity Audit, an exercise that the Scottish Government has declined to take part in. It isn’t clear how Scottish ministers intend to make information about racial inequality in Scotland available on the same basis as Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has.
Race may not be as present in Scottish life as in other parts of the UK, but it can’t be ignored. Identity politics shouldn’t eclipse the cause of economic equality that unites the left, but it should be possible to acknowledge its significance – even for those who would rather see Richard Leonard lead the Scottish Labour Party.