Rishi Sunak is now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He is the first black person and the first non-Christian to reach the highest office in the country. On the occasion of this year’s Diwali Hindu festival, the Conservative Party offered Sunak the keys to 10 Downing Street. The Conservatives could not have had better timing.
Sunak’s rise and the number of minority candidates vying for the top post in the previous party leadership race demonstrate a key fact: Conservatives are rich in ethnic diversity. Six of the original eleven candidates – Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Rehman Chishti, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak and Nadhim Zawahi – are from ethnic minorities. Such a diverse group of competitors was no accident. It was the result of targeted approaches, particularly towards South Asians in the UK, and a willingness to push MPs from ethnic minorities into ministerial posts.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany’s centre-right party, does not represent ethnic minorities in the same way as the Tories. The Conservative Party could potentially serve as a model for the CDU.
Merkel Cabinets: Lack of Ethnic Diversity
A comparison of the cabinets of Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel highlights the ethnic diversity gap between the Conservatives and the CDU. Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, from July to November 2019, was already more ethnically diverse than its predecessors. In Johnson’s second and last cabinet, around 25% of cabinet ministers were from ethnic minorities. The percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK is only 14%which makes this overrepresentation notable.
Merkel’s four cabinets during her 16-year mandate, from 2005 to 2021, reveal a mixed picture. Under Merkel, no CDU cabinet minister came from an ethnic minority. This is surprising because ethnic minorities understand 26% of the population of Germany. Weather 34% of Conservative MPs come from ethnic minorities, the number is alone 4.1% for the CDU.
Neglecting the German Turks for too long
The rise of ethnic minorities in the Conservative Party has its roots in 1980. Conservatives have identified the South Asian community as a target group. Margaret Thatcher’s government was particularly successful in winning over wealthy East African Indians. Her party has slowly shed its xenophobic legacy, most starkly embodied in Enoch Powell’s speech. “Rivers of Blood” speech.
On the other hand, the CDU made no such appeal to the German Turks, the largest ethnic minority comprising more than 1.2 million voters. Indeed, in 1982, Helmut Kohl’s government tried to entice 1960s Turkish immigrants to return to their homeland with the incentive of a refund. In filtered In confidential conversations with none other than Margaret Thatcher, Kohl communicated his ultimately unfulfilled intention to reduce the “Turks in Germany”. […] by 50% […] It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers. […] Turks come from a very particular culture and would not get confused easily.”
Furthermore, in the 1990s, the so-called «asylum compromise” limited the possibility of invoking the fundamental right of asylum. As a result, the CDU lost trust among the German Turks. In addition to this, the CDU campaigned while ignoring the German Turks by opposing their dual citizenship claim. Even the “C” for Christian in the party name has had a chilling effect on many Turks. Meanwhile, some conservative values of the German Turks are approaching those of the Cdu. As a migration researcher, Haci-Halil Uslucan told the paper: The daily mirror: “If the CDU does not emphasize the ‘C’ too much, it is very close in its attitude to a large part of the population of Turkish origin.”
The CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU) coalition finally recognized the German Turks as potential voters and managed to loosen the traditional electoral grip of the Social Democrats (SPD) on the German Turks in their favor in the last two federal elections. The SPD’s failure to enforce dual citizenship while in power and the belated expulsion of Thilo Sarrazin, a party member and author who published books with Islamophobic overtones, alienated German Turks from the SPD.
Adding to the shortcomings of the SPD, Merkel’s much-lauded refugee policy, which allowed 890,000 asylum seekers to enter Germany in 2015, has drawn German Turks into the CDU. “MYSELF soy also the chancellor of the German Turks,” Merkel said in 2016, reinforcing her pledge to strengthen Germany as an immigration society.
Lack of political will at the highest levels of power
Merkel’s already belated commitment further fueled the lack of representation of federal cabinet ministers of ethnic minorities as no further action was taken.
The CDU has shown little interest in awarding the highest executive and party posts to MPs from ethnic minorities, before, during and after Merkel’s mandate. Before, during and after her era, hardly any MPs from ethnic minorities were given the highest party and executive positions by high-powered figures within the CDU party.
Conversely, conservatives have sustained their courtship of South Asians through political action at the highest levels of power. In 2015, former Prime Minister David Cameron made up his mind She said, “The first Black or Asian prime minister will be a Conservative.” Under the motto “Vision 2020“, pledged to increase the proportion of members of parliamentary parties belonging to ethnic minorities by 2020.
Boris Johnson built on this view with his ethnically diverse cabinets, although his motives behind these appointments are open to debate. Johnson calls himself a “a man melting pot” in light of his Turkish and Russian-Jewish family history and his second wife of Indian origin. However, the appointments of Priti Patel, Alok Sharma and Rishi Sunak to their ministerial posts could be seen as a reward for their pro-Brexit positions. The same reasoning can be applied to the appointments of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Kwasi Kwarteng in the “the majority right-wing cabinet for a generation”, all also voted in favor of Brexit.
By comparison, the CDU lacks similarly influential political figures willing to promote the representation of ethnic minorities in government positions. During her four terms in office, Merkel missed a vital opportunity to recruit more ethnic minority personnel to the CDU/CSU Bundestag parliamentary groups. Instead of seizing this opportunity, she simply failed to follow through on her words.
Armin Laschet, Merkel’s direct successor as party leader, could have been a rare facilitator of change and leading a more diverse government. He demonstrated his he credentials as integration minister of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, and called for more ethnic minority MPs in 2010. He also published a book titled “The Upstart Republic: Immigration as an Opportunity” the previous year, outlining its pro-immigration stance.
After being elected Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Laschet set an example by appointing a Turk, Serap Güler, State Secretary for Integration in 2017. To date, Güler is regarded as one of the few prominent German Turks in the CDU which could rise to the highest ranks of the federal party in the next few years. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hürryiet during the 2021 Bundestag election campaign, Laschet showed his determination to poll the German Turks.
Asked whether there will be a CDU minister with an ethnic minority background under his chancellor, he replied: “We are going to speak on the formation of the cabinet after the Bundestag elections. But in fact, [our Bundestag is] not very diverse […]. If a quarter of the population has an immigration biography, but there are only one or two people in a parliamentary group, this is not representative. […] I would like to see more people with an immigration background, including more people of Turkish descent. […] in the Bundestag – and in the federal government”. However, he was defeated by Olaf Scholz after a disastrous election campaign, handing over the party presidency to Friedrich Merz after only one year.
More representation of ethnic minorities under Merz?
The successful careers of Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng and Sajid Javid among others within the party should serve as a target position for the CDU. The Conservatives have been accused of mere symbolism as there has been a substantial lack of representation in terms of policies in favor of ethnic minorities. Despite this, the party continued to recognize that the representation of ethnic minorities within the cabinet must reflect the realities of a British immigrant society and is crucial to gaining new electoral majorities.
The Conservatives have been accused of symbolism and criticized for their lack of policies that benefit ethnic minorities despite their ethnically diverse cabinets. Despite this, they continue to recognize the need for representation of ethnic minorities to reflect the UK’s immigration society and the vital role it plays in winning new electoral majorities.
The CDU still lags behind the Conservatives in representing minorities. They have been slow to reach ethnic minority target groups such as the German Turks. Belated statements by CDU politicians about Germany as a society with a high number of immigrants and a lack of political will to represent them led to the inadequate representation of minorities as deputies and ministers. It is doubtful that this representative deficit will be rectified under Merz, the current party leader and staunch conservative.
Despite promising to modernize and open up the party to new target groups, Merz did the opposite. He countered his pledge by advocating for more restrictive immigration policies and pronouncing a goal of winning back voters for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This does not bode well for ethnic diversity in the CDU and will cause the representation deficit to continue.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Fair Observer.
