it still helps to be male, white, privately educated, and have gone to Oxford or Cambridge.
That is the findings of the House of Parliament into the current demographics of Westminster. The report found that women make up 32% of MPs in 2017, and while a huge improvement on the 3% in 1979 it shows that women have a way to go.
8% of Parliament are non white from a population where 13% are non white, an another improvement on recent years. 29% of MPs were privately educated where as only 7% of the population are privately educated so very over represented by comparison. No surprises that 45% of Conservative MPs were privately educated compared to 14% for Labour.
It’s not just Parliament that doesn’t reflect the country as a whole. 68% of British Oscar winners were privately educated, 74% of Judges, 51% of leading journalists and many of the above attending Oxford and Cambridge with the very same politicians.
This is not a blog of envy but it is a blog that once again shows that being white, male, posh and a Tory helps you get to where you want to be. Now I don’t like or advocate positive discrimination in any shape or form but we need to do more to make Parliament and places like the BBC more representative of the country at large and the only people who can do it are ourselves. We need to make it clear we won’t vote for candidates who don’t reflect our communities or our views, we should influence the candidate selection process as much as possible.
The current system is broken, and it won’t get fixed unless we do it ourselves as I said, because you can bet that the current professional politician will have no inclination to let the dirty unwashed into their club unless we make it happen.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
Like you, I don’t like positive discrimination.
It always makes me wonder if the person involved is actually the best there is, or if I’m being lumbered with second best because of a need to be politically correct.
And then there is the fact that if you have a great balance of women to men, what other balanced must you have?
You mention private education, skin colour… we might add religion, sexuality, physical ability, age groups.
It would become a nightmare and we would surely end up with people who were there to fill a quota rather than there because they were the best people for the job.
In the end that might be rather unfair to white males!! 🙂
I think what we can do is try to break down the barriers; make it very clear that being a woman, and older person, black, Muslim, Jewish, Athiest, gay, wheelchair user, working class…or indeed a middle-class white male, should make no difference in selection processes, whether for parliamentary candidates, judges, military or indeed any other job.
I’m lucky. I don;t want to sound pompous but I’ve genuinely never really “seen” any of these differences. They are so unimportant to me, that although I’ll notice someone’s age, gender, skin colour, etc, it is a momentary thing. Within seconds it has ceased to be an issue.
We should educate people who don’t naturally feel that way to do so.
Tris
I agree, I don’t get it either. I’m married to a woman from Ghana but it really is not important. While I can’t be involved in a political party as they are too rigid and full of the same issues as the Westminster incarnations but they could be changed if people got involved.
Tris
Bit wrong button lol.
I was saying, more people need to get involved to make parties change but it is easier said than done. We saw the SNP leadership tighten their grip when they got all their new members but it was to be expected to be honest. Parliament is still too privileged but we are the ones who can change it.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce