What do we mean when we talk about political diversity? The thing that springs to my mind as a political geek in the UK is gender and race proportions in the House of Commons. This is an incredibly blinkered definition, and the terrifying numbers (14% women in the cabinet, only 21.5% in the house, 0% ethnic minorities in the Lib Dems, and so on) are functions of too many variables to be accurately accounted for, most of which are out of the hands of party executives and local selection committees anyway.
What I mean when I talk about political diversity is a diverse mixture of birth traits (sex, race;) life experience (SpAds vs. sheet metal workers;) educational background (private schooled vs. others and Oxbridge vs. others vs. none;) personal wealth; and even political affiliation (how many Greens, UKIPs, Communists and BNP/fascists there are.) Large numbers are shut out of professional political life today by barriers economic, social and democratic, and this is why our government is profoundly unrepresentative of our society in the UK.
None of the above, excepting the electoral system, are what I would call physical barriers, no one is barred from standing for parliament either legally or by their party on any of these grounds (even the BNP must now, by law, allow members of our ethnic minorities to join and apply to be their PPCs,) they are “merely” psychological and practical. The networks one gains by attending university (and joining political societies there,) an effect exaggerated at Oxbridge colleges, are hugely beneficial to those happy to exploit them. Equally, especially in smaller parties, the effect of personal wealth is very detrimental to candidate diversity, as the only person capable of running a “proper” campaign (as measured against the well funded machinery of the Tories) is someone of independent, or at least sufficient, means.
Political diversity does mean the proportion of women and ethnic minority MPs, which is still appalling even in this day and age, but there is so much more to it that just gender and race issues. Neither should this be a dry armchair topic, it is a gritty, tough subject that makes people angry and motivated (my kind of politics,) but is rarely found being debated. We need to move this debate out from Woman’s hour*; from there to the workplace, the youth club, the book group and the football practise. We need to encourage people from all walks of life to see politics as an opportunity, not a waste of time, and we need to make sure that those who are already engaged but remain on the fringes due to economic and democratic injustice are given a proper voice (to stop them turning to the violent dark side of political frustration). Only when a proper mixture of people really start engaging in politics, will we stand a chance of fixing our Oxbridge-ridden, match-fixed, inside-joke of a political system.
* Not that they should stop talking about it, of course.