Political Ascendancy of the South Asian Diaspora in UK
By Syed Muazzem Ali
CA
Watching the British Parliamentary elections from the other side of the Atlantic was an interesting experience. While the American contenders for the White House engage in an elaborate and expensive campaign for nearly three years, the less expensive British campaign was only for six weeks.
When Britain, for the first time, went for the televised debate of the three major party leaders vying for 10 Downing Street, many political pundits saw it as “ Americanization” of British politics. However, the impact of the TV debate in a Parliamentary election is far less crucial, as people vote for a party and not for a leader like the American Presidential elections. The center-left Liberal Democratic Party leader Nick Clegg surely stole the TV show; and his party emerged as the third force in British politics. After 36 years, the Brits voted for a “hung parliament” and Nick Clegg’s party took the role of “king maker” with a mere 57 seats, less than what his party had in the last Parliament.
Amidst all kinds of confusion, one thing emerged for sure, the British voters rejected the ruling Labor Party and its leader, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and sent them to the opposition bench after long thirteen years. At the same time, they did not cast enough votes in favor of the main opponent, the center-right Conservative Party and its leader David Cameroun, to form a government on his own. The Conservative and Labor parties each got 306 and 258 seats in the 650–member British Parliament. Expectedly, these two parties tried to woo the Liberal Democrats. However, after a relatively short haggling, the Liberal Democrats cast their lot with the Conservatives paving the way for the first Coalition Government to take over since Winston Churchill’s World War II Cabinet. Together they now hold 363 seats in the Parliament. It will be interesting to watch if this is a victory for pragmatism over ideology or a short-term coalition paving the way for another round of elections.
Currently, Britain is deeply divided over burning issues such as immigration, the debt-ridden economy and ties with the European Union. The coalition partners have divergent positions on these issues and the challenge is to work out a viable compromise. Conservative leader David Cameroun has taken over as Prime Minister conceding the post of Deputy Prime Minister to Nick Clegg. The two sides have agreed that economic recovery would be the Coalition Government’s top priority. On this crucial issue, the Liberal Democrats have accepted the cornerstone of the Conservative’s economic agenda which stipulates that the existing deficit, running at about 11% of the GDP, would be reduced through cuts in spending rather than tax increases.
In exchange for this major concession, Liberal Democrats have extracted from the Conservatives an agreement for holding a national referendum to reform the current “winner take all” voting system which favors the two major parties. They would like to introduce the “proportionate representation” system, like Germany and other EU partners, with a view to gaining fairer share of seats in the Parliament. The malady of the existing system is quite glaring: the Conservative with 36.1% share of votes have captured 306 seats, the Labor with 29.0% share of votes got 258 seats whereas Liberal Democrats with 23.0% of the vote, could only get 57 seats which is less than 9% of the total seats.
Premier Cameron, in his first speech after taking office, outlined the “deep and pressing problems, a huge deficit, deep social problems, and a political system in need of reform.” How the British voters express their views in the referendum on this important issue will have far-reaching consequences in Britain and beyond. In South Asian Parliamentary elections, one has seen how the existing “winner take all policy” has resulted in “ landslide victory” and “total debacle” but power-sharing has remained restricted among the main parties and so far, minor parties have failed to emerge as viable third force.
How does one fix the seriously ill British economy? The Conservative mantra of reducing the deficit through budget-cut will be difficult to implement in a welfare society like Britain. Thus Prime Minister Cameron is seeking to bring in a change in the British attitude of entitlements to one of individual responsibility—in other words, shifting the burdens from the state to the people. Whether the two partners can resolve their policy differences on these sensitive issues will determine the longevity of the coalition government. In a Parliamentary system coalition is like a “three-legged” race which requires constant coordination and harmonization, and one misstep can easily lead to instability and even gridlock. Here they can take a tip from the Germans who have shown the art of mastering power-sharing in a coalition government by resorting to the practice of consensus-building and across-the-aisle consultations.
The British election also showed remarkable ascendancy of the South Asian Diaspora in the British political arena. Pakistani–origin Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Chairwoman of the Conservative Party, has been inducted in the Coalition Cabinet as a Minister without portfolio. Daughter of a Pakistani immigrant mill worker, 39-year-old Sayeeda is feisty and somewhat controversial who shot to prominence by securing release of a British schoolteacher in Sudan in 2007. She was the youngest woman in the House of Lords and was conferred the title of Baroness of Dewsbury that year. Now she has emerged as the Christian Britain’s first Muslim Cabinet Minister.
Rushanara Ali became the first Bangladesh-born Briton to get elected to the House of Commons from the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency. Incidentally, all five candidates of different political parties from this South Asian dominant constituency were Bangladeshi-origin and Labor candidate Rushanara defeated her nearest rival Ajmal Masrur, of the Liberal Democratic Party, by a 2-1 margin. Thirty-five year old Oxford graduate, Rushanara was born in Sylhet and moved to the East end of London with her family at the age of seven. She attended Mulberry School and Tower Hamlets College. She caught the attention of the British media when she emerged as the first student from her college to be admitted to the prestigious Oxford University. She is also the first person in her family to go to University.
Interestingly, for the first time in British elections, a brother-sister duo, Indian–origin Keith Vaz and Valerie Vaz, were elected as MPs. Furthermore, nearly a dozen South Asian origin candidates, mostly Indian-origin, were elected to the Parliament. It will be interesting to watch how effectively these South Asian origin MPs can play their roles in the British Parliament.
(Syed Muazzem Ali is a former Bangladesh Foreign Secretary and Ambassador currently residing in California)
