SOMETIMES, the political feels personal. “That could have been me, my mum and dad,” Sajid Javid told the Sunday Telegraph last Sunday (29) of his anger at the government’s treatment of the Windrush generation. By Monday (30) morning, following Amber Rudd’s resignation, Javid was the new home secretary, charged with turning the scandal around.
Javid’s is a historic appointment – the first non-white politician to hold one of the “great offices of state”. That our first British Asian home secretary will be challenged across the dispatch box by his black British Labour shadow in Diane Abbott shows how ethnic diversity has become a new normal across UK politics.
Nobody could have claimed that when Javid entered parliament just seven years ago. The Conservative party could boast of having their first Asian MP as far back as 1895 – but then took 97 years to elect a second. David Cameron entered the 2010 general election with just two ethnic minority MPs, but came out of it with 10. That Javid stood in Bromsgrove, a leafy Worcestershire constituency that was 95 per cent white showed the Conservatives were breaking with the “ethnic faces for ethnic voters” model, where parties had feared that voters outside the most diverse cities were “not ready” for a minority candidate.
The Conservatives planned to mount a serious challenge to the Labour party’s claim to be the black and Asian voices in British politics. It has proved much more difficult than they had expected. It was a mistake to think that candidate diversity in itself would win votes: very few voters vote on the gender or skin colour of their candidates.
Ironically, having spent years worrying about how to shake off the baggage of the bad old days of Enoch Powell and Norman Tebbit, the party has risked creating “new baggage” for another generation, with Zac Goldsmith’s London mayoral campaign and now the Windrush scandal.
Javid’s critique of the 2017 general election, both in cabinet and in public, was the party had got the tone and content badly wrong. A polarising Brexit pitch made it much harder to appeal to Londoners, to graduates and to voters in their 20s and 30s – and set the party back with ethnic minority voters.
He recognises that changing the tone and policy on immigration will play an important role. Most British Asians are balanced on immigration, seeing pressures on housing and public services that need to be managed alongside the positives. Prime minister Theresa May’s polarising approach seemed to suggest that immigration was inherently bad – and that less of it was better. That failed to chime with voters who also wanted to hear a clearer recognition of the gains that migration has brought to the NHS, to the economy and to our society too.
Javid should seek to shift policy in areas where May’s views are considerably more hardline than the publics. He could start by ending the bizarre policy of turning down visas for Indian doctors whose skills are desperately needed by NHS trusts trying to cut waiting lists. His bigger challenge is to design a new framework for EU immigration – eventually moving the government away from a one-size-fits-all net migration target, which has damaged public trust because it is always missed.
Javid is proud to be the son of migrants to Britain. His life story symbolises what can happen when Britain gets immigration and integration right. Yet there will be diminishing returns on having a powerful back-story if he does not get the front-story right in the reforms that the Home Office needs.
Windrush and Brexit provide a ‘reset moment’ for the immigration reforms that could create an effective, fair and humane system that can rebuild public confidence. This home secretary needs to press the button.
His Highness Prince Rahim Aga Khan V
Time for Javid to push the reset button on immigration