Britain | Bagehot

David Cameron’s many mansions

The Conservatives have tried to woo ethnic-minority voters, and failed

THE VVIP picture gallery at the Neasden mandir, one of the biggest outside India, provides a record of British general elections. Shortly before the 1997 one, John Major and Tony Blair both visited the north London temple, seeking darshan and the votes of Britain’s 500,000 Hindus. Gordon Brown, Mr Blair’s successor as Labour prime minister, sent his wife, Sarah Brown, a few weeks before the 2010 poll; the right-wing press made rude comments about her naked feet. David Cameron appears twice in the gallery, once alongside his sari-clad wife, Samantha, and both times, to his credit, mid-term. Like the red Hindu tilak the Tory prime minister wears smeared on his forehead in one photograph, this marks his enthusiasm for a conservative, industrious and furiously upwardly mobile community which should vote Tory, his party strategists often note, but mostly does not.

In the 2010 general election the Tories won 36% of the vote, but only 16% among ethnic-minority voters. “Not being white”, writes Lord Ashcroft, a pollster, “was the single best predictor that somebody would not vote Conservative.” By one estimate, this cost the party 24 seats, a tally that could soar. At the coming general election in May, 168 seats will have a population of ethnic-minority voters that is bigger than the incumbent MP’s majority. By 2050 almost one in three Britons could be non-white. A senior Tory calls this a “demographic time-bomb” for his party—an ethnological threat to its future viability of the sort America’s Republicans are already facing. If the loss of disaffected whites to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) does not kill the Tories, the disdain of Britain’s ethnic minorities might.

Mr Cameron vowed to sort things out. On his watch, the number of non-white Tory MPs has climbed from two to 11, and it will probably rise again in May. He has also tried to improve Britain’s ties with India, hosted Diwali parties, commissioned a statue of that half-naked fakir Mohandas Gandhi for Parliament Square and appointed non-white politicians, such as Baroness Warsi and Alok Sharma, to senior party posts. British Indians, a relatively fulsome 24% of whom voted Tory in 2010, are the main objects of this charm offensive; but by promising to curtail police powers to stop and search, a particular blight of black Britons, the Tories have blown a kiss at them, too. Meanwhile a new crop of hard-working Tory MPs—such as Bob Blackman in Harrow East and Gavin Barwell in Croydon—are cozying up to non-white voters with gusto. But still no cigar: polling published by YouGov this week suggests non-white voters remain deeply uncharmed.

Whereas the two big parties are level-pegging in the polls, Labour has a 64-point lead among British Bangladeshis, a 57-point lead among blacks and a 20-point lead among Indians. This disparity may cost Mr Cameron a second term in power, and if so it will be his fault. Because his efforts, though well-aimed, are intermittent, often insubstantial and, as such, dolefully indicative of Britain’s gadfly prime minister.

It is not as if the Tories underestimate the scale of their task: right-wing think-tanks write about the problem endlessly. They also have, in the example of the Canadian Conservatives, a blueprint for how to unburden themselves of it. When Stephen Harper became party leader in 2003, non-white Canadians were three times more likely to vote for the left-leaning Liberals. Now they are more likely to vote Conservative, a change Mr Harper wrought with a three-pronged strategy. By apologising for a piece of historic discrimination, the Chinese head tax, he signalled a break with Canada’s lily-skinned past. He meanwhile ordered his party to engage with ethnic minorities relentlessly. And he demanded it court ethnic-minority media outlets especially. Mr Cameron’s efforts are feeble by comparison.

Part of the trouble is too little effort. Mr Harper opened cabinet meetings by asking his ministers what ethnic-minority events they had recently attended; Mr Cameron has shown nothing like that tenacity on this, or indeed almost any, issue. And what he has done is too often illustrative of the colour-by-numbers methods of the professional politician, skilled in grid and message management but with little eye for the big picture.

He appears, for example, to consider Britain’s diplomatic overture to India a success in itself—never mind that India, which has changed quite a bit since the Tories last considered it, has barely noticed. His efforts to curb immigration, in a forlorn effort to head off UKIP, are more self-defeating. For though it is true, as the Tories say, that British Asians are as hostile to immigration as most Britons, they do not necessarily think about it the same way.

To temple and mosque, mixed messages

Worshippers at the Neasden temple decried the fact that tighter visa strictures could make it hard for their Indian cousins to visit, even as they deplored the EU immigration that Mr Cameron can do little to reduce. This risks making the party of Enoch Powell—whose 1960s diatribes against immigration are recalled by black Britons especially—appear less colour-blind than it truly is. Had Mr Cameron provided more inspiration for all Britons, by offering them a hopeful and inclusive Tory vision, such errors might have mattered less. Boris Johnson, the entertaining mayor of London, was twice chosen by a substantially non-white electorate. But vision is no more Mr Cameron’s strong suit than is strategy.

There is a pattern to this Tory self-harm. The party of Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish prime minister, was until pretty recently shunned by Jews. The party of Heath—who in 1972 welcomed the Indians Idi Amin expelled—has never had their love. The party of Thatcher is decried by feminists. But the failure of Mr Cameron’s predecessors to take Britons of all hues with them, as they could have done, is no solace for him. The Tory-forever, white middle class they could count on for their majorities is no more. If the Tories are to win another, it must be multicoloured. To that end, Mr Cameron has started an overdue reorientation, but only just.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "David Cameron’s many mansions"

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